One, Divided
by Lazebe
Summary: A new take on the merger of the Avatar: LOK and Naruto worlds. The world is a strange place with a mysterious history. Amon is gone, and Korra is dealing with the aftermath and a strange sense of foreboding she feels has to do with Amon's departure. The worst person possible discovers the lost ship, the Sea Bison, and returns the ship with a warning of things to come. AU, Naru/Korr
1. Prologue: The Monk

Prologue to _One, Divided_

* * *

Earth. Fire. Air. Water.

Long ago, before there was an avatar, there was a world of strife and seemingly endless war. When technology was at its peak, countless lives were lost in a massive explosion caused by the greed of men. After the end, as they called it, people continually died off in large numbers; the technology that they relied on so much was of no use to them now. Water sources, and in turn, vegetation for animals and people to consume began to fade. Along with the murders and theft, there were even incidents where some people resorted to eating human flesh. The world was a bad place. One where greed ran amok: it overtook the world as it went into the last Dark Age human beings ever should have known.

However, something from deep within the planet's crust rose up. It buried away the radiation, swept away the plague in a torrent wind, purged the decay in flames, and birthed more wells of pure, clean water for the inhabitants of the world to live. Time passed and the world healed itself. Conflict died down to isolated incidents; war was no longer on a global scale.

Long ago, before there was an avatar, there was a man. He lived in a world where technology became relics of an unknown past. The world grew once more, thrived once more, and human beings along with it. Ancient artifacts found throughout a millennium would eventually lead to a discovery of their true, technological purposes. The artifacts, however, were scarce and useless at the time when people still relied on wax, oil, coal and lumber to light and heat their homes.

As a monk, the man spent most of his life traveling, passing along foodstuffs to people in need. Teaching others how to better care for their food and water supplies, giving them spiritual guidance and medicinal healing that was available at the time, and also banishing evil spirits that were believed, at the time, to be the cause of all ill will.

One day, this monk came upon an artifact. It was simple: a disk. A hundred pound disk made of stone that was no wider or thicker than the size of his palm, made of flagstone perhaps, a common stone, and weighing far more than it should have for its size. He believed a spirit must have inhabited the stone and caused it to weigh so much, as if it was burdened with some kind of guilt. Not even twenty years of age, the monk became fascinated with the heavy stone and carried it upon his person as if it were his own guilt, his own trepidation, fear, and anger. When he meditated, he placed the stone in front of him and tied his hands together using his prayer beads. Over the years, he channeled every negative thought, every ounce of negative energy into the stone, hoping that one day he could be free of all vices. As he traveled, and lived a life full of struggle, he found that, amazingly, the stone had begun to increase in weight.

As he grew older, the stone became so heavy, that he could no longer carry it with him. He left it where it lay on the ground and meditated once more before leaving the stone behind. A year later, he came back to where he had left the stone and found that it had not been moved. Attempting to move it himself, he could barely lift it onto one side by using his monk's staff and a second stone for leverage. He returned year after year, speaking with the stone as he always had. Eventually, neither using his staff or even a borrowed pack mule could make the small stone budge. He built a simple shrine for the stone and continued to come back once a year, until the year he married.

Through some stroke of chance, he found a woman who made it easier to carry the burden. When he finally returned to the stone, carrying one of his two children on his shoulders to the quiet meadow where it lay, he came to find that the stone had cracked. Reaching for it, he realized it was quite easy to pick up the stone. It weighed only a few pounds, much like it should have.

"My son," he said, "this stone carried every burden that I ever had to bare, making my life that much clearer for me. Without the heavy weight, I was able to do many great things. One of those, I have now decided, is to pass down this stone to you and your brother."

"Where did it come from, father?" the boy asked.

"I am not sure. I have asked this myself for a very long time. Take this," said the monk, breaking the stone in two along the cracked surface, "and give one half to your brother. I will stay here for the night and pray." When he handed his son the broken artifact, he reached up and picked him off of his shoulders, setting him down in front of him before kneeling down to look into his young son's eyes. "Listen to me. You are my legacy. You and your brother, together, should work to make this world a better place not only for you, but for others as well."

"Yes, father." The young boy responded.

"Now go. Off to your mother," said the monk, smiling fondly at his young boy.

He watched his son go, and then sat down to meditate before the shrine, thanking the stone for carrying his burdens for so long. Within a few minutes, he heard a response.

_**Quite an interesting young man, your boy is. You have another? His… broth-er?**_

Shocked, but uncontrollably enthusiastic, the monk sat up straight as he searched about, knowing full well that no one was in the area and it wasn't sound that he was hearing.

"Are you…" he began to ask, his eyes still darting back and forth, not yet believing the truth he knew in his heart, "… the spirit of the stone?"

_**I have followed you long enough to know how you speak, your language; to know what you are, about your interactions with others and this state of being you would call life. I have spent a long time, between your visits, contemplating about my own existence. Trying, impossible as it may be, to understand how your knowledge was imparted onto me. What I have been able to summate from all of the words that you have bestowed upon me is that I am the bane of your existence. I am the darkness to your light; the evil to your good. I don't quite know if you or I are really any different from one another though these husks we call our bodies may indicate otherwise.**_

The monk sat in silence as he partook on the thoughts that he heard in his mind and felt in the pit of his stomach.

_**Essentially, I am you, you are me, and we are one, divided.**_

"I see. What were you, though, before I found you?"

_**You misunderstand. You did not find me. I found you.**_

"Could you explain?" The monk asked, opening his eyes as he looked upon the shrine.

_**I can move the ground to my will. I traced your footsteps through each of your journeys up until the day I allowed you to find me. And now, thanks to you, I can feel myself transcend from that old stone body. Now, I feel as if I am made out of the wind, and yet fluid like water, and hot like fire. And yet… I also feel as if…**_

The monk's eyes widened when suddenly dirt began to swirl in the air in a spiral. When it came to its center, it coiled and coiled until it created another disk, this one a spiral made of soil.

_**From the soil, I can create a body. A new one… if I just… concentrate… no, as you say, meditate.**_

In the center of the spiral appeared an eye. The soil lit aflame and hardened while water poured out and created the wet sclera, iris and pupil that made up the eye. Fire lit tiny paths along it, creating thin tubes that looked like veins that appeared behind the spiral as a framework. Out of the elements, it created its own body and looked upon the single monk who made it all possible.

"You are… incredible." The monk said, his eyes widening in awe at the body forming before him. "Even seeing my children being born pales in comparison to this."

When the creature had a mouth, it opened it and spoke, "I thank you for that. It makes me feel… welcome."

"What would you call yourself?" asked the monk, curious.

"Call myself?" it repeated, in a tone it assumed was confused.

"Yes. My name is Pakal. I am a monk who has spent most of his youth in a monastery and has lived his life in the hopes of being of assistance to others both spiritually and physically." He brought his hands together and bowed his head, below them, bowing as deeply as possible while seated.

"I know all of this," said the creature, tilting its head back and forth and walking about, looking around for the first time with its own eye.

"Yes but it is polite and also a part of my custom to introduce myself to someone I have only just met."

The creature chuckled, though the Monk felt like it was more like a snicker than a light laugh. "I see. For now, you may call me 'brother', for I have not been given a name."

Bowing once more, the monk smiled and said, "It is nice to finally meet you, brother."

As time passed, the monk came to visit the creature more often, even building a home nearby so that he would no longer have to roam the land with his family. He continued to meditate, and he and his brother searched for the meaning of their existence together.

One day, his brother came to him and said, "I must speak with you, brother Pakal."

"Of course, if you can wait for my morning prayer, I will join you at your shrine soon."

Groaning, the creature walked around the house in the shape of a housecat, as it often did when the children and his wife were around. Once he was able to make his 'original shape', mimicking the shapes of other creatures was quite a simple task. He did, however, hate waiting. His impatience was possibly passed down to him by his brother, the monk, who had instilled every ounce of impatience, along with many other vice traits, into the stone many years ago.

The small white furred cat crept about the house, looking to catch a glimpse at the monk's family.

"Whoa! Kitty!"

The cat spun around quickly, its eyes widening.

Flinching back, the young boy named Mito knelt down and stared at the cat, eyeing it suspiciously. "What are you looking for, kitty cat? You want some food?"

_Get out of my face, you nitwit_, it thought.

"I have some bread… and a bit of leftover rabbit meat from papa's hunting yesterday."

_Not on your life._

The boy frowned. "You're a weird cat…"

The creature narrowed its eyes at the boy and then looked around, searching for a way out.

"What's wrong? Are you hurt? Are you OK?"

Freezing in place just before it was about to move, the creature looked up at the boy once more. _What does he want from me, I wonder?_

"Well, just wait there! OK, kitty cat? I won't take long, _promise_!"

Turning around, the young boy ran away towards the kitchen. While the creature sat there, watching him go; confused itself why it bothered to wait. If it was honest with itself, it must have felt compelled to wait due to how interesting the young boy was; he seemed sincerely worried about the small feline, and the creature wasn't wise to the world enough to realize that he was probably just interested in petting it because of its current form.

When it heard the pitter patter of the young boy's feet coming back down across the hall and saw the elated look in his eyes when he saw that the white cat was still sitting where he had left it, the creature suddenly ran.

"Wait! Kitty! Kitty cat! Where are you going? I found some fish instead! And also some of papa's tea!"

The creature slunk around the corner and poked its head out to gaze at the young boy. It wasn't sure if it should trust the boy. Sure, it was the monk's son, but it was also a stranger to it.

"OK, OK! I'll just leave it here," he said, smiling and setting the two dishes down on the floor.

The small white cat looked at the food, then up at the young boy. It refused to take a step, still unsure of the whole situation.

The boy took a few steps back, and suddenly the cat took one forward. Another step back and another step forward. On and on, this happened, until the boy was kneeling down, watching intently as the white cat stood tentatively over the food.

"Eat it! It's good! Promise! Mama made it only like two days ago!"

_What an odd young boy._ The cat thought before digging in.

While the cat ate, it watched as the boy neared it ever so slowly. When he got too close, it stood up, ready to move away, but he stopped and simply watched it.

After a while, the cat stopped eating and began to walk toward the small boy. Gasping, Mito reached out to pet the cat, smiling fondly as it took another step towards him.

Suddenly, a foot similar to his own stomped on his hand and kicked it out of the way, making Mito cry out in pain.

"That is _my_ cat! Father bought it for _me!_" cried the older of the two boys.

"Papa never said anything about a cat!"

"Well, he did to me! He said it himself!"

"Well, I only just wanted to pet him… can I brother?"

"_**NO!**_"

The creature, surprised by the interactions between two boys who were entirely different from one another, took several steps back as it wondered if it would be able to continue eating its food in peace. When the older boy looked at it, however, the creature knew it wouldn't happen.

"Come over here right now, Mr. Kitty cat!"

At this, the creature may as well have vanished; it scurried around the corner so quickly that it slipped on the floor and ran into the wall before running out the front door as easily as it entered.

The older boy looked at his young brother and angrily said; pointing in his face, "See what you did!"

Later, when Pakal finally made his way to the shrine, he heard a voice in his head.

_**I don't ever want to go to your home again.**_

Laughing, Pakal replied, "Oh, it wasn't so bad, I'm sure."

_**How do you know? You weren't even watching.**_

"Well, because young Mito told me. Yes, he came over, crying about how I got his brother a new cat… I told him that the cat must have wandered in from outside, hungry because it could smell the food, and also spoke with my oldest, Ceiba, and told him that if he composed himself properly and refrained from yelling and making selfish demands, then perhaps the cat would creep back in for another snack.

_**Never. I don't even need to eat, I don't think.**_

"Possibly no," said the monk, smiling. "But I bet it's good for you!" he added.

Coming out from his hiding spot, the cat looked around and then changed his form once more, showing Pakal his true form as the single eyed creature which walked on two hind legs with clawed front arms, colored in white. "You should bring me food here."

The monk, however, shook his head. "It is also good for you to have more interaction with the world than just with me. I believe both you and my children would benefit from you visiting more often."

In a hurry, the creature was gone, growling almost as the word, _**Never!**_ rang loudly in the monk's head.

"Ha ha ha. Do not underestimate the power of affection and love. Obviously, it hindered my journey to travel for the rest of my life for the good of my family. And I believe it is because of love that I am a happier man than I ever would have been merely helping random people instead of working to establish a place where people can come for medicinal supplies and classes where I can teach youngsters the healing ways."

_**It's a strange world that you live in.**_

Smiling, the monk said with finality, "It's a strange world that _we_ live in."

And for years, everything went well.

The boys, Ceiba and Mito, got along well with their new friend, as their father refused to call the white haired cat a pet. Pakal and his wife lived well together with their two boys until they became young men and he finally decided to tell his family of the creature.

After the years of training and learning to ward off evil spirits, the two boys took to their childhood cat's new form well, even welcoming their father's 'brother' into their home with gusto. Pakal's strange world, however, would only allow him happiness for a short time, strange as it was.

* * *

Pakal stepped out of his bedroom, his eyes barely gazing up from the ground. He avoided the looks of the boys for a minute, but he knew he would have to tell them and waiting on such a delicate issue could cause later problems.

"Boys, I am sorry. She is gone."

Pakal's boys eventually moved out of his home, and the monk stayed together with the creature, the entire family taking to calling it 'Brother' as it seemed to become endeared with the word and the concept.

Brother noticed that the inability to trust others, the anger and the vain and everything else which was bad began to fade away. Eventually, it was happy. Sincerely happy. Unfortunately, it still could feel sadness, and most of this came on when its brother, Pakal, was remembering his dear wife, Lady Xoc (pronounced: 'shook').

"Do you miss her?" Brother asked.

"Every day. Without fail." The monk replied.

He looked tired. Worn. The monk was literally a shadow of his former self.

"I am sorry," said the creature, looking down at the ground as they sat together in the monk's study, while he read a parchment under candlelight.

Looking up, Pakal asked, "Sorry?"

"Was that wrong to say?" asked the creature, stepping towards him.

"I don't suppose it is. You shouldn't be sorry though. It wasn't your fault. She became ill. She died because it was her time to go."

"How do you know when it's time to go?"

"That, my brother, is a question we all ask ourselves."

"Is there an answer?"

"I hope so."

Years passed. The monk, tired with the greed of men, cancelled the classes he held for the rest of the next month and went back to the shrine where his brother waited for him every day. When he arrived, he saw the creature sitting on top of the shrine and looking up at the sky.

"I can feel her…"

Warily, the monk asked, "Who can you feel?"

"Lady Xoc. She is still here… her… essence, I can feel her… what was it that you called it: her spirit?"

Surprised, the monk asked, "How do you know?"

"It's the same feeling I got every time I was around her. I feel similarly to you."

Chuckling, the monk merely stated, leaning on his monk's staff as he spoke, "That's love, brother. It does not have anything to do with her spirit. It is her good will that you must feel from the boys whenever they visit and me."

"No… I know love now. I can feel that too; however, this is something much more… potent. It is… something else. Hold on, I want to try something…"

Looking at his brother strangely, the monk just asked, "Oh?"

_**Watch… if I manipulate the soil, water, fire and air as I did before… then I will…**_

Waiting and watching as the soil around the monk began to shift and water dribbled across the ground in small beads, coming from several different directions as if they were each pulled from different sources. A spiral was created, much like before, but this time, instead of crafting an eye, a flame caught onto the spiral, lighting it like a small sun before the monk's very eyes. He reached for it, and tried to stare into the light, but found that he had to look away. When it was all over, he saw his wife standing before him, flesh and blood, as if she hadn't died all of those years ago.

"Darling! My beautiful Xoc! You've returned to me!" Grasping her palms, he watched as the woman looked around, surprised at what had transpired.

"Pakal. My love." She leaned into him, embracing him once more.

"My brother, he has brought you back from the dead!"

"I was dead?" asked his wife, looking at her husband strangely. "Not possible. I was waiting for you to come back home… where were you for so long? It seemed like an eternity."

Tears welling up in his eyes, he kissed her. His eyes shut, as did hers, and they shared a loving embrace for only a little while more before finally letting go, as the monk quickly realized he had to thank Brother. He owed his life to Brother!

"My brother, thank you so much for what you have done for me. I would have never thought it to be possible, if you hadn't of shown me today!"

Pakal held a feast for his friend, and they ate and sent a messenger to fetch their boys and bring them back home to see their mother.

Pakal was happy again. And so was Brother.

However, the following day, when the monk awoke, his wife was no longer of flesh and blood; instead, her body was crafted perfectly out of clay. It lay beside him in his bed, as if he had crafted the body to be perfectly pressed up against his chest with her head in the cradle of his neck.

Shocked and horrified, he turned to his brother, who tried to bring back the woman. To its avail, he was unable, and each time he tried her form became worse and worse deformed.

_**I don't understand. This should be working. I'm doing everything that I did the first time around and everything that I did when I created my own body. This should work!**_

Pakal, grief stricken, and emotionally wrecked because of the scene it caused when his boys came home to see the grotesque clay replica of their mother, receded into seclusion.

He tried to meditate, but he found that for the first time in a long time he was unable.

Every cursed spirit that he had supposedly dispelled must have come to visit him that day. He lay on the floor neglecting his bed in the center of his room as he stared up at the ceiling, distraught by the second time he lived through the loss of his beloved wife. The woman who changed everything about his life…

Consumed with frustration and anger at itself, the creature gathered all of the elements that it could muster and brought it together, trying to make his brother's wife once more. Unfortunately, he failed miserably each time, each worse than the last. The pattern was obvious; he should have stopped while he was ahead. In the end, however, the constant melding of the elements created something new within him. It flowed and the creature recognized it immediately as the essence that trailed the bodies of each of the people he had come to know and even many who he had seen while being contained in the flagstone disk.

_**This is…**_

It dripped at first, like an empty bottle of wine, the last few drops clinging to the bottom of the bottle before eventually draining due to gravity's pull. Eventually, those drops became a steady stream, and then a heavy splash, and a river… but as more and more poured out. Brother realized that it was larger than any lake or ocean. It was a deep blue sky that poured out of it.

Engulfed in flame, the creature gasped as the energy that consumed it made it grow. It felt so familiar, yet so threatening. And it came with words, terrible words that were spoken to it; a life's worth of the most terrible desires and feelings that one could have, poured out from deep inside of the creature.

_**It's so… warm. Like brother…**_

Not sure what made him burst out of his room and end his failed attempts at meditation, the monk ran up towards the shrine until it saw his brother, but stopped in his tracks when he realized just how large he had grown.

_**Brother. Help me.**_

Unsure what to do, Pakal reached for his brother and gasped when his fingertips and quickly the rest of his hand and arm turned stark white. He grasped onto his brother and pulled him close, surprised at how easy it was to move the creature that was now twice the size of his house.

"Brother!"

_**I'm scared, brother.**_

"Don't be! I am here for you!"

When Pakal managed to pull his brother away from the light, he was shocked to find that it now surrounded him while his brother stared in from the outside.

When the monk awoke, he saw that his brother had become a creature so massive that it looked like a small mountainside. On top of all of that, ten massive tails had sprouted out from its back as it began to get back up.

When he looked closer, however, he already knew that the creature before him was no longer his brother. Instead, he held his hands close to his stomach and closed his eyes. In him, encompassing his entire body, he felt a dark light glowing warmly within him. He felt as it faded away, and he knew what had become of his brother.

_**I am the darkness to your light; the evil to your good. I don't quite know if you or I are really any different from one another though these husks we call our bodies may indicate otherwise.**_

Tears pouring from his eyes, Pakal felt his hands shake as he felt a sense of big-ness. He felt like a giant; with it came a fear that if he stepped the wrong way, he would cause an earthquake.

_**Essentially, I am you, you are me, and we are one, divided.**_

Looking at the creature as it gazed at him; he knew what this feeling meant. This was the remnant of that evil spirit that lived in the stone. It had fed on his worst thoughts and sins and became as big as it was because his own spirit… his 'Brother's' no longer resided within it. He realized then that it was his own spirit that was containing the evil within the disk.

The giant creature stood on its hind legs and its giant tails shot up straight behind it forming a flame as it glared down at the monk with one large eye. It opened its large, fanged mouth and gasped deeply, drawing in air right before it closed its lips and prepared to release his breath back at the monk.

Reaching out, the monk used the ether of the world around him to block a fantastic attack which obliterated everything except the shrine beside him and the spot where the sage-like monk stood. Looking up at the beast as the terrible blast of energy finally dissipated, the monk reached down to the ground and shot straight up, stomping his feet down afterwards and causing the ground around him to rise like prison bars around the beast. He reached up to the skies and a bolt of lightning struck his hand, bringing him fire, and the monk waved the fire into a ring and extended his arms, sending it up above the bars and then closing his hands together to create a wall of fire above the beast. The flame, imbued with the monk's darkest essence, became black and eternal. Taking in a lick of black fire through his lips, he breathed in deep and then released his breath, lighting each of the bars made out of soil until each of them turned into molten pillars of rock. Spitting onto his hand, the monk stretched and gathered the water until he had a long strip of it and fired it off like a whip, draining more water from the surrounding areas using the whip and bringing it back in a fluid wave as he created a tidal wave on land by calling forth the wind just as the water rose up before him and then engulfed the creature and its prison.

"I thank you for the knowledge you gave me while I was residing in your spirit. Now that I know how to control the elements, saving this world will become that much easier."

Unable to communicate, the monster simply lashed about in its prison, trying to reach up through the flames only to irk back away from it as if it was just shocked. It snarled at him through the prison bars, the pillars still carrying embers of the black flame that simply would not go out.

"You have used me long enough. I know it is my evil intentions that I dispelled from my spirit that you fed off of. It is the evil of humanity that has allowed you to grow as large and as powerful as you have. If I were to let you go, you would be the end of this world… so instead… like you did for me, I will take you in me, here."

The monster screeched, rolling onto its side as it scratched at the bars in dismay, blasting about in its prison but unable to cause as much destruction as it had the first time around due to the ether that was surrounding it and suppressing its powers.

"I can see them… the pathways to this energy… it is incredible." The man said, looking at the beast with his eyes, which had developed into a spiral which eventually began to taper off and become rings.

"How incredible… my eyes feel as if they are made of energy. My body… it feels sturdy." He smiled and reached through the prison bars, pressing his hand against the body of the beast and absorbing it through his hand into himself before clutching his sides roughly and dropping down to his knees before the massive, empty cage.

Seeing the world for what it truly was with steady eyes for the first time, the monk knew what he had to do. There was a war brewing. It was growing steadily, to the point where two large countries were ready to put countless lives on the line for small bits of land, trying to overwhelm the other with brute force. Believing in the good in people, but not in good people's bad sense, he stepped between the boundaries of the two warring factions and split the land in two simply by pressing his right hand into the ground below his feet, spreading them out a great distance from one another as he often did his children when they were fighting. He told each of them as the lands split apart, water gushing into the the center creating the ocean that divided the two civilizations, "One day, when the time is right, the two of you will meet again and you will come to realize just how alike you really are to one another. And you will learn to love one another, because you are they and they are you, and you, together, are simply one divided."

In one land, the monk became known as The Sage of the Six Paths who would later create the moon and bind the body of the beast in it, and instill its energy into the land where his children lived by dividing it into nine equal parts which soon became known as the tailed beasts. After giving his youngest son his 'body' and his oldest son his eyes, his spirit went and resided in the other world. And there, he became known as the Avatar: he who brought balance and peace to the world, and who would forever reincarnate in order to keep watch so that the same dire event could never happen again.


	2. Chapter 1: Reuniting Again, at Last

Earth. Fire. Air. Water.

* * *

The world was divided by the hand of a god to prevent a war between two growing nations, a war that would have eventually ended them both. When the world split into separate continents two very different paths followed.

As the soil before them divided they watched each other sail away, but as distant relatives might do, these two nations eventually forgot each other's faces. And those faces changed over time, making recognition impossible as a millennium, then two and then three passed along. But when the world was split apart so forcibly and the moon was created to seal the body of the creature, the ten tailed beast, not even the sage-monk could foresee the cataclysmic ramifications that would follow such careless, sudden movements.

Much of the world became covered in water, drowning many people who were not able to reach high elevation in time. Once the planet and its moon fell in sync, the tides fell into a much more manageable rhythm. Also, due to the massive land movement, the sea moved and dormant volcanoes became active, covering the land with molten rock and ash and making it that much harder for people to farm and to live. In the center of the new ocean, a mighty torrent separated the two lands for many, many years; the whirlpool was so powerful and the weather so fierce that not even centuries later when ships were reinvented did people from either side attempt to cross.

Once the angry planet doused its temper, the two different worlds that were split apart began carving out their own paths. Over time, they began to forget about their old rivals and eventually, the idea that there was ever another continent faded away as each suffered their own struggles throughout the ages.

They both were a land divided by the elements, once again proving the monk's skepticism right regarding the good sense of the people; instead of uniting as one element, the human element, they struck out differences among one another and in the world of the monk's two children, they received the techniques corresponding with the eyes and the body of their father, and using these new techniques waged a bloody war, dragging the people of their land with them; unfortunately, it is difficult to say that the people, eager as they were for blood, were simply their victims. This was a war which needed only an excuse to begin, one which lasted until the bitter end when both of the monk's children were engulfed in the eruption of a dormant volcano that suddenly rose from the ground, swallowing them whole; it was as if the very world itself had decided enough was enough. Their two sides split apart into families and clans, some eventually coming together to form villages and, with time and healing, cities and even countries.

Not for naught, the two brothers did leave behind a lineage. This lineage held comprehension of the energy of the world, and they used this passed down knowledge for very many good things. Life became bearable even in catastrophe thanks to the control over the _essence_ or ether which this world called _chakra, _and the other _chi_.

The world of the two brothers thrived. Then, they suffered again when the nine tailed beasts began ravaging the land. Little did the people know; it was humans that caused the once neutral creatures to suddenly run amok by threatening capture and intending to secure them as weapons of destruction in order to obliterate their enemies. The beasts, spirits made entirely out of the essence of the monk, learned over the years to fear the humans for their ability to rein them in under their control. Out of this fear developed a hatred that spurred the random attacks of the natural disasters known as the tailed beasts. The knowledge to entrap the beasts was passed on by the brothers to each of their families, whom then passed it down to theirs. Because of the constant strife between villages and securing tailed beasts, this world was unable to grow. They developed techniques more suitable for assassination, theft and deceit.

The little bit of technology that survived allowed them to reverse engineer some of it and create many useful tools. However, their knowledge in this instance was not self-derived. Due to the fact that they spent so much time fighting one another, each of the countries aiming to be the sole conquerors of the beasts, there was never enough time to correctly develop their technologies, and so they spent most of their time only copying what they could see and scavenging for parts. This meant that they had some things, and not others.

The second world, however, where the avatar was born, was protected. There were wars, but every time the avatar died or was killed, he or she was reborn again in a cycle corresponding with the seasons: autumn air, winter water, spring earth, and summer fire. Thanks to the interventions of the avatars, for many centuries, this world was allowed to flourish and prosper, only suffering very brief stunts of growth during the time between one avatar and the end of the next one's training.

Neither of the two worlds, however, had the technology to make it through. It wasn't until the time of a young avatar named Aang that a ship powerful enough to break through the terrible weather, and the still violent whirlpool, was created.

The ship embarking from a port city within the Fire Nation with the mission to cross the massive whirlpool and see what was on the other side was sent during Fire Lord Zuko's reign. The ship, called the Sea Bison, named by the Avatar himself, was sent across the great Mo Ce Sea back then and the smaller scouting ship accompanying it returned home to tell of the mission's success. The Sea Bison, however, disappeared for many years and the consensus was that it was lost at sea.

And only after a little less than a century, about sixty years after the ship was made, in the midst of a rebellion during the time of another avatar, did avarice allow for the two warring peoples who had forgotten one another… to finally meet once more as the Sea Bison mysteriously came sailing back, unmanned, just tens of kilometers away from the magnificent Republic City.

* * *

A young man sat beside a giant frog statue, his eyes gazing down the slope of the mountain where the ground descended into a massive ravine that cut through the land as if Gamabunta himself had carved it up with his giant knife. The sun would set in a few hours, and the light coming from behind the magnificent landscape of Mount Myoboku basked the area in a surreal glow in shades of red, purple and orange. Plants and mushrooms of sizes and shapes never seen anywhere else flourished in the area, and a very soothing aura covered the mountain like a blanket of snow on a sunny day.

Naruto spent much of his time after the war perfecting his sage abilities. He did a little writing like his mentor Jiraiya but never actually published any of it. He wrote down everything that he could remember about his youth; every journey, every struggle, every happy or lonesome thought, every fight and victory and the losses as well, they all made their way into his writing. He wrote about losing the old man, the Sandaime Hokage, as well as the loss of both Jiraiya, prior to, and Tsunade during the Great War against Madara, Obito and the Jubi. He wrote about his friend Neji and how his death hurt his beloved friend Hinata more than she let on after the war. She loved him like a brother and Naruto's guilt towards Neji's death as well as the current situation with Hinata's worsening depression weighed upon him like a hundred stones. He could manage it from time to time by saying to himself that it was the only way, and Neji gave his life for his friends, but eventually that weight would begin to drag down on him. The weight made it hard for him to breathe, and harder still for him to concentrate on ascending to a greater state in his training.

Between the sympathy he felt for his friend and his own state of uncertainty regarding the next steps required of him in order to bring about the peace that his mentor had hoped for, Naruto was facing a truthfully stagnating dilemma.

He knew that he could not protect the five great villages on his own. Even using every last bit of Kurama's power was not enough to end the last Great War. There was a temporary truce between the villages and strong relations between their shinobi, but the biggest issue was the economy.

The economy for shinobi villages relied upon mission requests. These requests were ranked from D through A and then S for the highest mission. They all paid different rates, and there were even a few D ranks which paid much higher than an A rank, simply based upon the nature of the request. Some of the most difficult missions, after all, are unpaid; many of these are S-ranked and the security of the Village or country depended on them, and many of these were stricken off of the record to keep the books clean. Any compensation for these types of missions usually come in the form of prestige and renown, sometimes even favors; having a favor from the right people in the right place can mean the difference between life and death far down the road.

The shinobi then completed these missions for what compensation was allotted to them. Completing more missions, regardless of the monetary value, increases the stock of the village; when a certain person or group of persons requires various tasks and jobs done and consistently receives the same great results from a certain village, they tend to praise that village's reliability and so the stock in a particular village rises as word of mouth spreads.

As word of mouth spreads of a job well done, that particular village receives more jobs and so the rest of the four receive less, not to mention the pittance left after the five have had their share for the rest of the much smaller nations to squabble over. This eventually balances itself out; however, thanks to greed, conflict often ripens due to misunderstandings, while third parties prowl about looking to make an extra couple hundred ryo off of these unnecessary disputes. This, then, becomes the cycle of hatred on which the world fixates itself with.

_To stop this cycle of hatred…what do I have to do?_

Naruto felt… weak; he was a hero that became a god among shinobi at an age younger than even his father was during his prime; he could call upon the strength of chakra all around him in nature using his sage techniques; he even once used the power of the ten tailed beast to end the war before splitting it back up into its nine different forms; however, even acquiring all of the power in the universe meant nothing if he couldn't do something about the state of the world.

Looking down the slope of the mountain, Naruto saw a large rockhide mountain toad sitting on a stone a few meters away from him. He stared at the toad for a minute and something in his head clicked.

_All of the power in the world… means nothing… power, strength… that has been my problem all along; maybe… it's not what I have to do… but something that I have to stop doing. What would change everything? What must I let go in order to change the world?_

_Power._ The only word that he thought could answer the question was the word _power._

But did that even make sense? Say he gave up fighting, relinquishing his power to his enemies. How would he be able to protect the people dear to him?

"Jiraiya believed in you, Naruto," he said to himself. His eyes slowly closed and he relinquished a long, tired sigh from deep in his chest; in silence, he reflected quietly on his thoughts while he listened to the sounds of toads as some of the lesser summons were nearby, resting in the water before they would head to their homes on the mountain.

Alone with the toads, and a giant stone statue of one immediately to his side, Naruto hoped to reach a higher state in his senjutsu training. He never wanted to struggle like he did during the war and losing anymore precious people to war and fighting was out of the question. A few weeks of hanging out with toad statues though made him realize that it wasn't going to just come to him. He'd have to go out and search for it.

Looking over at the large toad statue beside him he smirked and said, "What do you think? Is it about time I go on my way?" He paused, as if waiting for an answer before saying, "It's time for some adventure."

The statue was just less than three meters tall. Its erect pose and webbed appendage held out in front made Naruto feel like it was some sort of guardian; a protective spirit for Mount Myoboku. It was different from the other statues which were created when a person failed at developing their senjutsu using the toad oil from the mountain. It looked like it was meant to be there, to ward off bad spirits.

Sitting under it and enjoying the shade which it provided, he grinned to himself as he pat the large toad statue gently on its foot, saying, "I really appreciate it, you know."

For an inanimate object, the statue sure had charm. Naruto could even swear it winked.

Chuckling at his own musings, the young man leaned back to recline on his out-stretched hands. To his surprise, however, he felt the jagged edge of a stone at the base of his palm and turned to look at it. It was embedded into the dirt behind him, so he dug it up and, bringing it in front of him and holding it up in front of his face, he was surprised slightly at the perfectly round shape on one side and the jagged edge on the other. He thought the ashy gray stone looked as if it had been broken in half some time ago, and upon closer inspection he noticed that it was made of the same type of stone that made up the frog statue beside him.

The toads still sang their chorus all around him. Standing up, he began to walk up the narrow path along the mountainside. Holding the stone still, Naruto noticed something strange and stopped to look at it, his eyes squinting in curiosity.

"Huh. It's gotten… heavier."

As Naruto walked away, he failed to notice the spirit of a man walking down the side of the mountain, past him to the spot where he had found the stone. He wore a monk's robe and carried a staff with rings on one end, rings which chimed silently from the spirit world. He looked down at the floor there and knelt before it, bowing his head. Suddenly, his spirit shifted into the form of a young child, and a boy once known as Mito smiled down upon the small shrine that appeared before him; the song of the toads grew louder as he began to fade.

* * *

"Amon is… dead?"

"Yes, his body was found near the wreckage of his boat. We went and picked them up while they were floating along the water."

"That's incredibly lucky."

"Indeed. Saikhan and his men rallied in time to send a team after them just as they were escaping. They witnessed an explosion out on the water and searched for their corpses using the help of a local water bender to gather the bodies."

Korra frowned. "So… why are you telling me?"

Lin Beifong crossed her arms, saying matter of factly, "I was told by Tenzin that you saw his face. We have many eyewitnesses, but many of them are known Equalists. As such, you are the only one who can, without a shadow of a doubt, identify the second body as belonging to Amon and confirming the eyewitness accounts. From what Saikhan has relayed to me, we are assuming that the first body must be Tarrlok's since the second one is the only one that survived undamaged and is distinguishable after the blast. Apparently, he could easily tell, at least, that the second body was _not _the council chairman."

Korra cringed. _Distinguishable? _She didn't know how to react to this; _how_ did one react to it? How must the Avatar react? She knew that Amon was scum that manipulated good, but desperate people into believing that benders as a whole were oppressors and tyrants who wished to impose their will with their special talents and strengths as a medium, but he was still a person. She didn't think that the fight against Amon would end in his death. From her naïve perspective, she once assumed that he would serve time in a high security prison, and she would grow from the experience. She would become famous for taking him down, finally making a name for herself. Instead of a growth spurt, however, it felt more like her growth had been stunted due to the tragic turn of events that lead to this… this conversation she was having with Lin Beifong, the ex chief of police who seemed as stoic as ever.

Korra, ever walking the line which lied between pessimism and optimism, figured that, at least, she had managed to recover her bending abilities and the love of her life, Mako, finally confessed to her his love. With Amon finally gone, she should have felt relieved, elated even; she should have felt happy to be able to spend more of her free time with Mako and the rest of her friends, even Asami if the girl could ever find it in her heart to forgive her; instead, all she felt was trepidation and worry.

Something else was in the works… she could feel it in her gut.

One of the most powerful, iconic and, though she hated to admit it, charismatic leaders of this century had just been killed in a boat accident during a getaway. All over something as simple as his identity; did having his identity truly grant him so much power?

This thought seeded itself in the back of her mind.

_What if I was only Korra and no longer the Avatar?_

Her eyes seem to lose focus as she stood before the older woman, who was gazing back sternly upon the young Avatar.

Korra, acting as if everything was normal, gave a simple smile. Her eyes seemed to be looking past Lin Beifong though while she said, "Sure. It's the least I can do after all that's happened."

The stoic woman looked down at the young avatar before performing a quick scan of the room and taking a peek down the hallway that lead to the bedrooms; she searched for Tenzin to see if he was within earshot as the last thing she needed was more observations from him that she and Korra were 'bonding'. Seeing that he wasn't, Lin took a step towards the avatar and said in a curt, demanding tone, "Korra. You are troubled. Spit it out."

Eyes opening a little wider, Korra looked up at the strong-willed woman. Korra's usually immoveable resolve often wriggled uneasily under the brunt gaze of Toph's daughter. However, she was never one to back down. Sticking out her chest slightly and looking at the older woman crossly, Korra denied her accusation.

"It's nothing!"

Beifong frowned. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. It's nothing…" She ended her words less strongly than she had began, and Lin picked up on it like a polar bear dog sniffing out an otter-penguin hiding in the snow.

"You do _not_ fool _me_, _Avatar_. I said: out with it!"

She took another step, looming over the avatar while holding her in a steady gaze, eyebrows knitted together just so and lips pursed into her usual mild scowl. Korra shrunk a few centimeters, flinching under her eyes which appeared to be all-seeing.

Korra looked away, crossing her arms in a show of defiance. "Fine. Jeez, you're always so pushy, Beifong."

Standing authoritatively, Lin Beifong merely inclined her head slightly, her gaze ever relentless.

Taking a deep breath, Korra's eyes trailed lowly on the ground. She hated to admit her innermost feelings, even the most fleeting. "I can't believe that it is over."

Lin smirked slightly and nodded, "Is that it? Yes, it's hard to believe after all that we've-

"No, what I mean is… I can't _believe_ that it is over. I have this feeling… like maybe… he's not dead yet."

Pausing to look closely at the young girl to see if she was being sincere, and then nodding slowly afterwards, Lin replied, "I agree that it seems a little convenient that it ended in such a rush," between words, she reached out and grasped Korra by her shoulders in a firm, but calm grip, "but this is why I am asking you to come and confirm that we do indeed have his corpse so that it may finally end. Any other questions that may come up we can investigate later after the autopsy." Seeing into Lin's narrowed eyes, Korra could almost feel what she was thinking.

_I don't like__this Korra. Where is all the strength she used to have?_

Korra, though a little surprised by the warmth and care in Lin Beifong's simple touch, smiled up at the ex chief of police and nodded, a bit of confidence returning to her eyes. "You're right. Let's go."

Lin smiled.

_Atta girl._

The two women stood outside of the autopsy room. The initial autopsy was postponed until they could bring Avatar Korra in to identify the body. There were already several reports of people claiming that they saw the identity of Amon before he died. Whose eyes to trust better than those of the very Avatar who backed the man into a corner and revealed him for what he truly was?

"Are you ready?"

"No doubt," Korra said, taking in a fresh breath before she opened her eyes and steeled her eyes upon the door in front of her.

"Good." Lin reached over to the door and swung it open with one arm, then stepped aside and waited for the Avatar to enter first. Lin then led the girl through the autopsy room and into the backroom in a much cooler room with a single large table in the center. Korra looked up at the lights in the ceiling, noting that they were very bright and adjustable. She followed Lin to a wall which had very large cabinet doors. She searched for the right number, picking cabinet number ten, and pulled open the door releasing an eerie fog that carried a smell that made Korra grimace; it wasn't putrid, but it seemed to be masking the smell of death and, to Korra, felt very unnatural. She had never been in an autopsy room before and, even if she had back home, water bending together with the natural cold was usually used in lieu of freezers like these within the southern water tribe to preserve bodies for study.

Looking at the body as Lin pulled it out on its in-lane tray, Korra gulped as she watched the ex chief of police reach over and, without even so much as a glance back at her, she threw the sheet back.

Closing her eyes, Korra bit her lower lip and turned her head away.

_His eyes are still open._ "That's him."

"You're certain?" she asked, eyeing Korra calmly with a steady, cold look like steel.

"Yes. I have no doubt. It's the same face I saw covered in makeup when he tried to convince everyone that his face had been badly scarred and burnt; it was the same one that I saw when he first used water bending to save himself after falling into the bay."

Lin nodded and covered the body back up. She patted Korra gently on the shoulder when the Avatar excused herself, then turned back to close the storage cabinet with Amon's body in it. It was relatively undamaged, but it seemed like he had been knocked unconscious by the blast and could not wake up. He likely drowned while unconscious.

That peaceful death was far too good for him, Lin thought.

She left the autopsy room, only to be greeted by Saikhan.

"Saikhan, are you here to oversee the autopsy?" asked Beifong.

A grim look on his face, Saikhan shook his head. "We've got some problems. It's about thirty kilometers away, by the near West shore."

"Thirty kilometers?" she asked, narrowing her eyes. "What are you waiting for then? Do we have wheels?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Beifong spotted Tenzin. She arched a brow and turned her head, "Tenzin? You too?"

"It appears, Lin, that a ship that my parents had their honeymoon on has returned from the endless waters beyond the great Mo Ce Sea."

Lin arched a brow. "Honeymoon? That would mean the ship is a little over sixty years old."

Tenzin nodded. "The ship was spotted drifting along the ocean waters without a crew."

Saikhan chipped in, "It was first spotted by the navy which is working in that area. They have tried to board it, but the inner chambers are sealed with some strange magic and they are unable to breach them."

"Tell me more on the way over there."

"Yes, please lead the way, Saikhan."

"Alright. We'll take my car."

"I'm driving."

"Eh… it's my car."

Beifong paused, turned to look Saikhan squarely in the eyes while Tenzin tried his best to refrain from twitching.

"Your point?"

After a brief moment of squirming under the woman's steely gaze, Saikhan slowly reached out with the keys in his hand and dropped them into hers. "Right…"

Lin started up the ignition and waited just enough time for both of the men to get in before slamming her foot on the pedal, not bothering to wait for Saikhan to metal-bend his seatbelt securely into place since his hands were grabbing at both the door and the front panel with the strongest grip he could muster. Tenzin, used to Lin's driving, was a little less worried, but he still paled when his friend drove them through an empty sidewalk to dodge traffic as they made their way to the bridge.

"Beifong!" Saikhan yelled, "Slow down, damn it!"

"No need to yell, you're only making it worse," Tenzin called out from the back, his arms crossed and his eyes closed as he knew they would make the drive which would take them about two hours normally through the winding roads on the countryside in only one.

When they arrived, one hour later, Saikhan fell out of the car as soon as he opened the door, but he quickly shot back up, shaking his head as the adrenaline rush he felt began to die down.

Tenzin smiled, a light chuckle escaping his lips as he nodded appraisingly at the current chief of police, "You are quite durable, Saikhan. I vomited the first time Lin showed me how fast she could drive one of these automobiles."

Beifong rolled her eyes, "Yes, you did: right on my lap once we stopped."

"I decided then that I would never own one myself. I much prefer Sky Bison."

"Yes, yes. You are scared of new things, I know." Lin said, sharply. She turned to Saikhan while Tenzin frowned. "So, what made you think exactly that the chambers were sealed using magic? Also, if I remember right from what you've told me before, Tenzin, the ship was a Fire Nation battleship that was armed to the teeth and manned by a full crew when it crossed over the mighty whirlpool. It only survived the weather thanks to the expertise of the Fire Nation's ship builders, but much of it is still made of metal."

"None of the metal benders reported being able to breach the doors," he responded.

"You're right, Lin. The ship was state of the art for the time. It was called the _Sea Bison_. My father told me that he convinced Fire Lord Zuko to rename it after he heard that the original name was _The Red Spear. _He also managed to get his old friend to lend it to him on its maiden voyage for his honeymoon."

Lin smirked, "Probably the reason why your mother squeezed out three kids, one after the other, in the first place."

Tenzin blushed, but looked at Lin sternly, saying, "It wasn't exactly one after the other… we are a few years apart, my siblings and I."

"Can we move along now?" asked Saikhan, arching his brow. "Not that I wish to dissolve this lover's quarrel, but this matter is very urgent!"

Lin scoffed, "The only reason I was so intent on coming here because the Amon incident is over and I was bored waiting around, doing nothing. In fact, I want my job back as soon as this mission is over."

Tenzin looked at her and said, "That matter will have to come under discussion in the council."

Lin glared, but conceded. "Fine, you nitwits may have your little tea ceremony while I fill out my rehire paperwork."

"Don't I get a say in this?" asked Saikhan from beside the two, but he flinched back when both of them turned to him and, in unison, said "No!"

Saikhan sighed. _Oh well. It will be nice to have her back, _he thought.

He had brought the two benders to an empty beach in between the rocky hazards just along the coast and a fishing town nearby. They picked the location because it was secluded, and the crew wanted to pull the ship over as soon as possible; many of them were superstitious, and working on a ship that made it all of the way back from some unknown location beyond the great sea, almost sixty years later, was quite troublesome for many of them.

"There it is, do you see it?" said Tenzin, looking off into the distance and spotting the ship from afar while the two leaders of the police force simply stood there and gawked, shaking their heads or mumbling "no".

"You have very keen eyes, Tenzin." Saikhan remarked, narrowing his own eyes as he brought a hand up to shield the light from his eyes as he waited for them to adjust.

"Quite." Lin waited patiently, looking in the direction that Tenzin was and crossing her arms behind her back.

After several minutes, they finally began to see what Tenzin could see some time ago. After a little under an hour of waiting, the trio watched as the giant battleship sliced into the beach.

As soon as it was close enough, Lin raised her arms and focused her chi just before clenching her fists and bringing her elbows in beside her waist simultaneously, turning her wrists as she made her fists. "Saikhan, give me some assistance."

Saikhan, not sure what she was doing, simply nodded. He performed the same motions she was and prepared by seeking out and feeling his chi, though this came naturally to him and felt more like simple movements by now. In one sudden movement, Lin focused her metalbending on the hull. Within a few seconds, she peeled the composite structure of the hull apart by calling upon the various metals which made up the material, something very few benders were able to successfully do.

Surprised, Saikhan tried his best to assist her. Unfortunately, he was only able to pull slightly on the hull, as it was not made completely out of metal. "This is incredible, Beifong! You must show me how you are able to do this!"

Lin did not speak. She simply performed more of Toph's own metal bending stances, directing her chi in order to manipulate the properties of the mixed elements within the metal which were originally made of the Earth; the same properties which were purified and refined in order to make the composite metal of the hull, but more importantly, the infrastructure beams that lined the shape of the hull.

When she was finished, Lin sighed and stepped forward, walking under the crew into the bottom of the ship as they stared down over the bow. Their reactions were mostly of awe, but many of the policemen that were manning the ship were ready to get down and off of the vessel, for after all, they were all earth benders before they were metal benders. And many Earth benders fared badly while out at sea.

Tenzin and Saikhan looked at one another then chased in after her. After ascending the stairs, the trio stopped before the giant Fire Nation symbol etched on the giant door that led to the elite quarters. Reaching out, Tenzin stopped Lin from using her bending by grasping her by the elbow. She turned to look at him and they exchanged a look. He smiled, and they tried using the door handle first.

When they opened the door, they saw a figure sitting on a large bed in the center of the room. He leaned over, his hands resting on his knees as he seemed to be struggling to breathe. After a few moments, Tenzin stepped forwards, Lin right beside him while Saikhan turned around to look back out the door and make sure that there wasn't anyone sneaking up behind them as they made their way in.

"Hello. You are aboard an old Fire Nation vessel. Are you one of the children from the original crew members? Are there any others? Any of the original crew left?" He knew it was a long-shot, but it was worth a try. "Also, what is your name?"

Lin took a step back suddenly. Tenzin's eyes widened slightly in shock when the figure looked up at them; he or she, Tenzin couldn't quite tell, had long, straight black hair which cascaded down like jet black silk. His skin was ghostly pale, white like a polar-bear dog's coat in the snow, and his eyes were lined with what appeared to be purple markings that ended in points along the bridge of the person's nose.

It wasn't the hair, the skin or his markings which made their skin crawl, however. It was those golden yellow eyes that stared back at them from behind long lashes, lips curving upwards ever so slightly just before words passed the person's lips.

"I see… the original crew… forgive me, but they are long dead. My name is Lord Orochimaru, the leader of a once great ninja village."

Tenzin frowned. The amount of time that passed… he must have known. "Ninja village? Where?"

"I can't say for certain, since I don't know _where_ I am, _now_."

Lin glared, not trusting the pale man for even an instant. "Tell me, how did you manage to cross the sea beyond the great sea? Where are you from and how did this ship make it all of the way back to this land without a crew?"

He looked at her and shook his head, "I am uncertain of how it made it back without a crew. I suppose it may have something to do with that boy…"

"What boy?" Saikhan asked, confused.

"He is a powerful sage, known as a great conqueror and even a hero in some places where I am from. But he is no hero of mine; he abducted me, imprisoned me in this steel prison and must have sent me on my way after slaying the people of my village. That monster…" he said, "That demon."

Lin arched a brow. "Demon? Monster?"

Orochimaru nodded.

"He used the power of the great demons made purely out of chakra to level my home and take everything I held dear away from me. He is a tyrant."

Lin muttered, confused, "Chakra?" But Tenzin interrupted before she could reform her word into a serious question.

"This boy, this... demon," Tenzin began. "What is his name?"

"His name…" Orochimaru said, "Is Naruto Uzumaki, from the Land of Fire."

Turning to look at one another, the trio exchanged worried glances at the ominous tone in his voice and at the name of a land they had never heard of but felt suspiciously that it sounded far too much like a land much closer to home.

* * *

Note: First off, thank you for reading and I was very happy to receive such a nice reception considering it was only my first chapter, and one which hardly included any of the characters you came here for in the first place!

Aside from the story, I just want to let all of you know that I have made a new group on deviantart dot com called #Naruto-Loves-Korra. I am also running a G+ profile and a Twitter profile, as well as a forum here on fanfictiondotnet. If you are interested in joining our group, then come and join us!

We do not have many members yet, as I believe it's the first group of its kind and I only made it recently. There I intend to put all of my fanfiction as a backup, but I have also gathered what I could find in images after scouring on the internet for what seems like weeks now, off and on. Each image, all NarutoXKorra related, was added after I received the artists permission.

One of my favorites on there is by vegibee, who drew that incredible picture that I found _after _I formed the group. It was so perfect, I asked if she'd lend it to us as our banner, and she said yes, so please, support your fellow artists and writers and join us together on deviantart. If you don't have an account, you can click on the links to our forum here on fanfiction and post any images you might find or have yourself and your stories as well. If you do not want to make a DA account, then I can post your fanfic or drawing or even your video (with our youtube account) on DA and link to it on our other websites so that more people will see it, giving you sole credit and linking directly to your fanfiction profile.

Now, the real reason why I formed the group in the first place was because I was upset that there weren't more images, quality or not, of this couple. With the great fanfiction already written here on this website by many wonderful writers, however, I was shocked, so I decided I'd try and stir up some interest.

Please, if you are an artist and would like to submit your work for the cause, please join. Even if you only want to keep tabs on what's going on, keep up with new stories and see some really cool drawings/deviations, then come join us and tell us what your favorite thing about this pairing is! Also, if you have further questions, you can best reach me on deviantart since that is where I spend most of my time!

Naruto and Korra both need more love. And both my group and I need your support to have a reason to run it at all. So please, come check us out. More information/links on my profile.


	3. Chapter 2: Meditation

Chapter 2: Meditation

* * *

"When are you going to get over it already, Korra? The past is past, let it go."

Korra turned to give him a dirty look. She was beginning to get really frustrated with Mako's insistence that she just ignore her gut. Something told her that the whole event wasn't actually over, that he died too easily and something he may have done before his death will come back to bite them in the butt if they missed the chance they had now to stop it.

Korra bit her lip, refusing to rise to the bait that Mako laid out, and simply continued to walk.

"Really?" Mako said, annoyed as well. "You're just going to give me the silent treatment?"

"And what if I do," Korra snapped back, turning back again to glare at him. "Are you going to leave me for someone else?"

Mako's jaw dropped ever so slightly.

That was ugly.

Asami and Bolin, caught in between the crossfire, stepped forward and Asami said, "Whoa now, Korra, you shouldn't say things like that. And Mako, if the Avatar has a bad feeling about something then maybe we should at least prepare for it? But still, Korra, even if Amon set something in motion before his death, how can we stop it if we don't even know what it is yet? Unfortunately, this puts us in a bad position, but we can at least be ready for whatever it is, right?"

Korra, staring at the girl who she knew just had to be furious with her, bit her lip and nodded slowly.

"Right," Bolin said while he stroked Pabu's chin as the small fireferret curled itself around his neck. He continued, "We need to watch out because Zombie Amon is coming back from the dead!" Walking around with his arms outstretched, Bolin stuck his tongue out and made obnoxious groans and moans while crossing his eyes and muttering, 'brains'.

Korra hesitated to chuckle, but Asami burst out laughing while Mako just stayed silent, his sharp eyes narrowed as he looked away.

Korra and the gang were about to part ways, with Korra apologizing to Mako, but repeating how she felt about what was going on. Still upset, Mako blew her off, saying 'whatever', and walked back to the car, not even waiting to see her off. Bolin, eyes wide, said goodbye to Korra and ran over to his brother, saying something like "What the heck is that all about?"

Korra, feeling tears threatening to break, turned abruptly to leave.

"Wait, Korra. Can I speak to you for a moment?"

Korra turned to look at Asami, who was standing with her hand on her elbow as she held her arm in a nervous stance; Korra knew the girl wasn't the nervous type, so she took the conversation much more seriously. "Yeah, sure, Asami."

Asami, who had told Korra once already that she was not upset with her, still didn't have the best relationship with Korra ever since her and Mako split up and the two of them got together. Still, it wasn't much worse off from the shaky relationship they had in the first place, so the two girls were able to patch up their hurt feelings long enough to develop a kindred respect for one another. Asami, showing how mature she could be even though things didn't end up her way, did not loathe or even envy Korra in the slightest; instead, she looked inward and asked herself questions like why she even liked Mako in the first place and if maybe the experience was necessary, as painful as it was to bear, for her to grow as a person and as a woman.

Smiling softly, Asami shook her head slowly and said, "Korra, you shouldn't take it out on him; he's just being realistic and he doesn't quite get that maybe he has a second or third in command that was just waiting for him to fall, only to take over once he was gone and take the equalists in his own direction. I agree that we have to approach this with caution, but for now, I think we should all rest."

Korra nodded, remaining quiet, but attentive as she listened to her friend.

"It's been so hard, on all of us," said Asami. She then leaned forward and set both of her hands on Korra's shoulders, squeezing them tightly as she continued, "But especially you, and a little rest and relaxation might do you some good. Actually, if you want, there's a music festival coming for the next three weeks to Republic City. We should go together! At least for one night!"

Korra looked away, "I don't know... just the two of us?"

"Well, maybe you can bring Mako and I'll go pick up a date somewhere." She winked, "I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard."

Korra smiled, "Well, how about Bolin?"

Frowning, Asami said, "I'm not so sure about that one... I think that would be kind of weird... well, maybe it can just be as friends. The two of you excluded, of course."

Korra groaned, "Now I'm not so sure about that... I hope he isn't too upset with me."

Asami smiled, "Don't get worked up about it too much. Sometimes the boy needs to be put in his place, right? Who's he to say what the Avatar thinks is unimportant?"

Korra sighed. "I guess you're right. But I value his opinions too... I just feel this sense of... I don't know. Overwhelming dread, sort of like the first time I knew I would be facing Amon."

Korra and Asami shared their goodbyes, and then they parted ways. Korra, before leaving, saw Mako look in her direction for a brief second and then looked away. His arms crossed and his eyes closed as if he was trying to ignore her.

Sulking back to her room, Korra decided it was time to meditate.

Taking a seat in the center of her room, on the floor, Korra straightened her posture as Tenzin had often instructed her to, then she brought her hands together on her lap, interlocking her fingers and pressing her thumbs together before she closed her eyes and breathed. She took air in, and then out with a sigh.

In… and out…in…

Within a few minutes, Korra opened her eyes and saw Aang standing at a cliff edge. Noting that he was facing her, she watched him pick up a staff which the elder Katara had once told her was his glider, and he pointed downwards, drawing her eye closer to the base of the mountain. Regaining her bearings, Korra found that she was standing on a hill on the other side of the valley that was created between the hill where she stood and the cliff where Aang was. She didn't recognize the area and figured it was just something that the previous Avatar cooked up for whatever reason he had; she couldn't fathom why he couldn't just meet her in his room, make this whole experience a little easier on her.

Grumbling at Aang's insistent pointing Korra narrowed her eyes and looked around. Suddenly, she spotted it! It was a cave.

Seeking guidance from Aang, she called up to him through her meditative state, but he walked back away from the edge and disappeared behind it. Annoyed, but now certain he wanted her to go to the cave, she obeyed his direction.

Spelunking not being a hobby of hers, Korra slowly made her way through the cave entrance. She noted that it grew darker and darker, and she was about to call the whole thing off and leave when all of a sudden she thought she heard something deeper in the cave. Listening closely, she found she could hear the steady fall and pour of a waterfall nearby, the sound arriving through her ears as if it was passing through a tunnel. Then, stepping further in, she could feel the moisture in the air as she made her way deeper still.

At the end, Korra found herself at the mouth of a cave which was covered from sight by a waterfall. The walls were embedded with a shiny rock or mineral that made the entire mouth of the cave glow a deep, blue color, the sight effectively zapping Korra's breath for a moment as she took in the beauty of the scene before her.

The light dancing at the end of the cave like a flame spurred her on. Just up ahead was a small campsite where she found a fire with several branches in it, as well as some smooth, riverbed stones about the size of her fist which were starting to turn white from the heat of the flame. Thanks to the minerals which were embedded in the walls of the cave, the flame appeared to be white and blue. Korra had never seen anything like it, and she wondered just how the cave was so brightly lit in such a strange, and breathtaking display.

She saw a pack up against one of the blue-colored walls and knelt down beside it. Rummaging through the pack, Korra found several small bundles made out of strips of large leaves, as well as an iron cast pot with no handle and a few boxes of noodles, and also a bowl and a few pairs of chopsticks, among other useful items like rope and twine, and even a small sake jug with a cork in it and a scroll. Korra's breath hitched and she squeaked in pain when she accidently pricked her index and middle fingers on the tips of some knives which were inexplicably pointed upwards in two of the back pockets! They were dark colored and incredibly sharp. Packed off to the side in one of the pockets, she saw the small assortment of strange looking knives shaped like the point of a spear on a skinny handle with a loop at the end. A glimmer of what appeared to be her blood trailed along the edges of some of the knives in that pack, but Korra didn't notice because she was too busy cursing.

What a dunce. What kind of idiot puts something sharp pointing up? He could get someone hurt over here, damn it! Korra groaned and sucked her fingers into her mouth, tasting the coppery blood beading at her fingertips.

Suddenly, she heard a skip in the steady sound coming from the waterfall at the cave's entrance. She squinted to try and make out the figure standing there, and she quickly put away the sack, letting it lean up against the wall in the same way she found it.

Watching him carefully Korra circled around the fire, any hope to conceal herself before she could be spotted by him gone. He walked in holding three fish hooked through their mouths with a wire. To her surprise, he didn't seem to notice her. Instead he simply walked up to the fire, right next to her, dropped a few branches that she didn't know he was carrying beside it, and he retrieved from a smaller pack tied to his belt a bunch of large, rolled up leaves which he then proceeded to unroll and use as a mat to begin gutting the fish there on the floor.

His eyes roamed from his work for a moment and he looked up at the pack against the wall. His eyes flickered back to the fish and then they widened slightly.

He immediately stopped for a moment, looking carefully at the pack sitting up against the wall. Korra turned and looked at it, but she was sure she placed it right where she had found it!

After a moment or two, Korra realized that the pack was flipped around so that it was facing the other way than how she had originally found it. Cursing her inattentiveness, she wondered how he was going to react. Immediately, the young man stood up and left to go deeper into the heart of the cave. Korra stayed put, not wanting to risk going into the dark lest she appeared in some new, even more confusing place.

Seeing him return, Korra got a much better look of the man as he knelt down once more beside her.

She could scarcely tell, as the blue light had completely pigmented both his skin and shaded his light hair, but she was pretty sure that he was a blond. Shifting her body over one knee at a time, Korra sat in front of him and looked into his bright, glowing eyes. They shimmered in the strange light and made him appear to be surreal; something beyond what, in reality, he probably was. It didn't help that he had strange markings on his face. They looked like whiskers!

Leaning on one arm, Korra watched as he reached for his pack again and pulled from the pouch where she accidentally pricked her fingers. Surprised and a little annoyed, she noted that there was a way to pull from the bottom of the small pouch on the pack! With a quick, clever pull, he fingered one of the strange knives into his palm and immediately began gutting the fish in front of him.

Using the knife, the young man took it and cut from just underneath the fish's chin, then made a small incision all of the way down the belly of the fish toward the anal fin. He then took the knife and lifted the pectoral fins, cutting, one at a time, deep at an angle on each side, but stopping once he reached the spine. He used the tip of his knife to cut away any skin left over both on the top and the bottom of the fish where he had made his cut, and with one quick movement he pulled both the head and all of its guts out. He set them aside on a large leaf that he unrolled and spread out on the floor and then repeated the process with the other two fish, pouring some water from a canteen he carried on his person to clear away some of the leftover blood and body fluids left behind. She watched while he carefully removed spines using the tip of his blade and de-boned what he could in a timely manner.

Nodding slightly, Korra leaned over on her other arm as she watched him stand up. Leaning backwards on both elbows, Korra held her breath as he stepped directly over her, taking his cooking pot with him towards the water fall at the mouth of the cave. When he returned he set the filled cast-iron pot on the ground in front of him near the fire while Korra sat back up to continue watching him.

Taking the same knife he used to clean the fish, he dug it underneath one of the smooth stones sitting in the fire and scooped it up in a smooth motion. Tapping the flat side of the knife against another one of the stones to clean away some of the ash left over, he brought the knife back over the water in the pot and tilted his wrist, dropping the stone inside and watching as it sizzled and hissed as the hot stone met the cool water. Doing this with a few more stones, he soon had the water boiling, and within a few minutes he had the noodles cooked to perfection while he turned the fish over on the stones and would periodically pick at the meat to taste it.

Groaning, Korra watched him cook even though she felt a very sudden pang of hunger. She watched still while he turned away to reach back into his pack, searching animatedly for something (even going so far as to completely empty out the pack for whatever it was he was looking for, leaving a small mess on the ground). Her eyes slowly trailed back to the fish cooking on the hot stones and she bit her lip. Without thinking, she took the knife that he set down on one of the leaves in front of him and quickly made a small cut on the prepared fish; before he set them down to cook he had retrieved a few spices and herbs that he collected in his jacket pocket and used them to season the meat, along with a bit of the leftover blood to keep it nice and juicy.

"Damn… to think all of this time I've just been firebending my fish and eating them like that when I could've had it like this… this is so yummy!" Korra moaned as she thought she tasted a bit of something that smelled like a mix between rosemary and pepper. Setting the knife back down, she eyed him carefully as he turned back around, grinning like a child who just got a new toy.

In his hand was a small package labeled:

Ichiraku Ramen

Real Ramen Seasoning!

Number One!

He quickly opened and dispensed the package into the pot. Korra leaned in close and sniffed the concoction, smiling with raised eyebrows. It smelled great!

He took his bowl and chopsticks and began to serve himself. Annoyed, Korra waited until he was done serving, and while he was saying thanks, for whatever reason, she reached over and snatched the bowl away from him.

Suddenly, his face went completely pale and he dropped his chopsticks. Picking them up as well, Korra chuckled at the look he was giving the floating bowl and utensils and wondered what was going on in his mind at that moment.

"Oh, if you could only see your face, boy," said Korra, chuckling softly to herself.

Shaking somewhat, she saw that he was now looking at the bowl carefully, curious of the way it was being held. Messing around, Korra made wailing ghost sounds, even though he couldn't hear her, like "Wuuuhh-uuhh-oooh-oh-oa! I'm a g-g-gho-o-ooossst!" and moved the bowl and chopsticks in a wavy manner. He seemed to be less inclined to lean any closer once she started waving the bowl around, and so she shrugged and clicked the chopsticks together, smiling.

"Well, thanks for the grub!" Taking another bite of the fish and tasting the ramen broth, Korra sighed in delight, only to notice that he had stopped and simply sat back on his haunches, stroking his chin as he tilted his head.

"I wonder what's going on here," he said.

Korra laughed, and replied, matter-of-factly, secretly wishing he could hear her gloating, "I'm eating all of the food that you worked so hard to prepare, that's what is going on!"

Her fun ended, however, when she heard the grumbling of his stomach, and she felt sorry.

Biting her lip, Korra looked at her chopsticks and the food, and then at him. He looked on, still curious, but it was obvious now that he was very hungry. She wondered how long he had gone without eating and what he did for a living, and if maybe she was doing more harm than she thought she was doing, and perhaps she should have thought things through before just going and messing with the man trying to eat when the food obviously didn't belong to her.

Looking into the gleam of his silver-blue eyes, Korra's face flushed just a bit as she tentatively held the bowl out to him. He looked at it, seeing that it was coming close, then watched as the chopsticks then were turned around and handed to him. He smiled, and then shook his head, waving his hand out in front of him.

"No, no, that's fine. You're hungry, aren't you? I'll eat what's left when you're done."

Korra stared on in silence, eating at a very slow pace as she eyed the man in confusion. "Why is even staying? If I were him and I saw my food floating around, I'd probably jump right out this cave and run as fast as I could. What a strange guy." Korra looked at her plate and realized that she was starting to lose her appetite.

Getting an idea, Korra reached over for a piece of the cooked fish and lifted it up with her chopsticks. Smiling, she held out the morsel in her firm grip and said, "Hey, c'mon. Take a bite."

Curious, the blue eyed man reached over and waved his hand up above the meat and chopsticks to check for strings. Chuckling, because she could tell what he was doing, Korra shook her head and leaned closer.

"Alright, alright. Ahhh..." he said, opening his mouth wide.

Korra fed him, and watched as he chewed his food, his lips pulled into a taut smirk.

"I wish I could see you... or at least hear you," he said.

Korra nodded. "No kidding. It's like talking to a wall here."

He scooted back somewhat and just watched. This was the strangest interaction he had ever had, yet he wasn't surprised that it was happening just outside of Mount Myoboku.

Korra, sated, bolted upright as an idea came to her like a staff to the head.

Turning to the fire, she began to bend the flame until she pulled away a small wisp which she carried protectively in her open palms. With a quick spin, Korra stretched the flame until it covered her hand. Within a few seconds, most of the flame disappeared except a small bit still burning on her index finger. She then walked up to the wall and pressed her finger against it, writing out, "What's up!"

At first, Naruto was enthralled by the beautiful display of her firebending, but eventually he realized that she was writing on the wall. Excited, he immediately retrieved one of his knives and went to the wall to reply directly underneath her.

Their written dialogue on the wall went like this:

Hey!

I'm Korra, what's your name?

Naruto Uzumaki. Are you a ghost?

No.

Oh, good. I didn't think so... anyways, where are you? I can't see you.

I know. It doesn't matter how loud I am or how close I'm standing to you, you just can't see me.

Why's that?

I'm actually not sure.

Any ideas?

One: I think since I'm currently in my meditative state, I must have used my Avatar powers to get here... but I'm not sure why I'm here at all.

Why you're here?

Yeah, I mean, I've never been able to touch anything during my visions before today. But I was even able to eat and taste the fish and noodles that you made... by the way, it was really tasty! 3(heart*)

Oh, glad you liked it. Have some more if you want.

Thanks, I will.

So, what are Avatar powers?

Well, as the Avatar, I can meditate and speak with my previous reincarnations, I can also do all types of bending even though everyone else can only do one of the four main types.

That's cool, but what's the Avatar?

You don't know what the Avatar is?

No... is that like a Hokage or something?

What's a Hokage?

It's the leader of Konoha. I mean, is an Avatar like a Kage? A village leader?

No, not really.

So what does the Avatar do, then?

The Avatar protects people. :)

Anyone?

Well, good people... well, I guess everyone... I really wish we could just talk.

I know... let me try something. I hope it works.

Ok! I hope so too!

Korra, excited to hear that he may know of a way to speak to her directly, grabbed him into a quick hug and shook him up a little bit, causing him to lose his balance and fall back on his butt. "Whoa! Alright, alright, take it easy!"

Korra, grinning, sat down in front of him and just waited. Whatever he was going to do, it looked like he was going into meditation himself. Leaning closer, she watched as the skin around his eyes suddenly became rough and colored slightly orange. And when his eyes opened, her own widened at what she saw: a pair of rectangular, black, pupils stared back at her, his irises a hazy yellow-orange with small black markings interspersed among them.

She noted his wry smile and smiled confidently back.

"You can see me now." She said, her eyebrows rising slightly at the way his eyes carefully considered her.

"Yeah." He said, simply, smile unfaltering.

"And you can hear me... so," Korra began, her eyes slowly trailing away before snapping back to look him dead in the eyes as she said, just a little huskily, "What do you think?"

"I think," he began, pausing as he searched for the words to describe what he thought about her. "That you just have to be sitting where I'm at to really appreciate what I'm seeing right now."

Korra, blushing, said, "That sort of sounds like a cop-out."

Naruto leaned forward, hooked his index finger under her chin, his thumb stroking her lower lip once to sate his curiosity, and then he pressed his lips against hers in a searing kiss that went on for ten of the longest seconds of Korra's life. Even once it was done, she wasn't quite sure it was and she found herself leaning forward again with half-lidded eyes only to see him pull back and turn his head away.

Confused she tried to form a question, but her body was overheating so much that she was having too much trouble sitting up straight, much less to be able to talk, and eventually had to lean back on her outstretched palms.

"I don't even know you... I don't know what came over me," he said, biting his lip. She looked up into his eyes from underneath her brow and licked her lips. She could tell he was doing the same, his mouth opened just enough for her to see his tongue roll back and forth over the front of his teeth and periodically peek out from between his soft lips, and it made her cheeks flare red to know that he was, very slowly and patiently, savoring her taste.

"Who knows," Korra finally responded, staring at him still as she thought about what he had said. "Hey... what did you mean by that?"

"Huh?" He sounded confused.

"About where you're sitting... what do you mean? You mean that I somehow look... different than you expected?"

Naruto smiled and said, "You're pretty sharp... My eyes can see the energy around us... but you are just so different. You are made... _entirely_ out of that energy, chakra. It's incredible!"

"Chakra?" she asked. Suddenly, the cave, along with Naruto and everything else in it, disappeared. Korra saw Aang walking away from her and followed him quickly. A moment later, she was sitting in her room, her eyes wide open, alone with the memory of the boy in the cave and the kiss he stole from her.

* * *

Korra opened her eyes when she heard a knock at the door. She heard Tenzin call out to her, "Dinner is ready, Korra. We have a guest, so please be polite."

Rolling her eyes, Korra mimicked him "Please be polite! Bwa." Then she called out, "Sure! Whatever you say, Tenzin!"

"I heard that!"

Groaning, Korra just ignored him for the time being and went to freshen up in the bathroom.

When she arrived at the dinner table, Korra immediately eyed the strange man sitting at the new spot on the table. He was smiling at young Ikki and Meelo while they asked him questions, periodically nodding or giving them short answers to questions like "Why was his skin so white?" and "How come he had purple pointed things on his face?", among other things; all the while,Jinora, the eldest, held Rohan, the newborn baby against her chest as she watched the man cautiously. She must have gotten the same feeling Korra had when she first walked into the room and saw him: one of trepidation.

Pema stood up and sent off a fond smile at Korra as she waved her over, "Come here, come here! Korra, we would like you to meet our guest. His name is Lord Orochimaru and he is staying with us for a while. Here, Lord Orochimaru, this is Korra, our Avatar."

Orochimaru, eyeing the brown haired beauty with his golden yellow eyes, smirked ever so slightly and stood up from his seat, then took a step back to clear away from the table and bowed his head low before her, his hair cascading down in front of him. "Avatar Korra. I have heard much-so much-about you. I am so relieved to have met such a reputable protector of the weak and the helpless, as I have a favor to ask of you and the council of Republic City; me, and... my people... we are in dire need of justice."

Korra, bowing her head as well, replied, "Oh? What is this favor?"

"Please, let us eat first, then we may speak." He said, turning to Tenzin who smiled at Korra and nodded.

"Indeed! Korra, I am very proud of you. I heard that you went today with Chief Beifong."

"I did." Korra said, acknowledging it. "It was... a little strange."

"Yes, I am so sorry that you had to go through that." He saw Meelo gnawing on a carrot like a dog on a bone and said, "Meelo! Eat your food with some respect!"

Blinking, the boy took a bite and grinned, showing Lord Orochimaru the orange mush in his mouth.

Laughing, the white snake said, "Master Tenzin! You have such charming and well-behaved children. I am envious of you, sir."

Smiling, Tenzin felt his pride flare just slightly, though he knew Meelo's antics were hardly anything to cheer about, "Thank you, Lord Orochimaru."

Pema butted in, "Milord, do you have any children?"

Orochimaru, with a strange smile on his face, said, "I do, but they have all grown and left me. When a chick hatches from its egg it so soon wishes to fly. Cherish every last moment you have with your children... I have not seen mine in the longest time."

"Orochi-man," Korra said, "where are you from?"

A bit of anger flared in the man's eyes, and Korra noticed it. Tenzin, coughing, blurted out, "Korra, it is Lord Orochimaru, not Orochi-man."

Orochimaru raised a hand and smiled, looking at Korra while he spoke. "It is quite alright, Tenzin. I understand that some find my title and name to be quite exotic... after all, am I a lord anymore? Do I have any reason to hang onto this title that was bestowed upon me? My people are all gone... taken away by that wretched demon. I am lord only to no one."

Korra's eyes widened. She had only heard of demons in tales of Aang's adventures to the spirit world. Were there really demons out in the world that weren't trapped in the spirit world?

Tenzin, looking at his children, said, "Jinora, please take Ikki and Meelo to the living room table and finish your meals there. We have to speak alone for a moment."

Korra watched the children leave, groaning about being sent to the 'kiddie table'. Turning to look back at Orochimaru, she immediately cut to the chase, "This demon... what did it do?"

Orochimaru frowned. "The demon murdered my people. I am the Lord Kage of Otogakure, the village hidden in sound."

"Village hidden in sound? Why is it called that?" Tenzin asked, butting in to try and extend his knowledge of the stranger's world. Korra, interested as well, listened closely.

"We are ninja, a village of ninja that works hard and has sacrificed much; we are smaller than most of our neighbors, but we were proving, I believe, to far exceed the quality that they expected from us... perhaps, we became too well known and that is what inevitably brought about our downfall."

"What do you mean?" Pema asked.

"Ninja villages compete for something called mission requests. Mission requests rank from D to A, in pay, and then S for special mission requests. For the most part, they pay well enough for a competent group of ninja to make a fine living out of, but we became so well known for completing our missions that I believe our rivals' pockets were no longer as plump as they were used to."

"So, because your village was making too much money for its size, your neighbors were getting jealous." Tenzin said, receiving a curt nod from Orochimaru.

"And you think this was the reason why you were attacked? Did he tell you this directly before he imprisoned you in the ship?" Pema asked.

Korra, looking at Pema, asked her, "He? The demon was a man or something?"

Orochimaru smiled, his brows furrowed in a solemn expression despite the smile, "Exactly right. I suppose the man himself isn't a 'demon' as you might expect... he houses the spirit of one of the most dangerous and destructive demons in our world: the Kyubi, the nine tailed fox."

Korra muttered, "Kyubi?"

"Yes. Otherwise, he is a fairly normal looking man... though he does have pronounced features: blond hair, green-blue eyes and whisker marks on his cheeks."

Korra, hearing the description, felt her heart sink to the very bottom of her stomach. Immediately, she was reliving the kiss that very man gave her during her vision. She remembered how much it felt like... he needed her. It was searing, burning, so hot that just thinking about it made her sweat. His prying tongue slipped out of her mouth and his teeth caught her lower lip just as they began to pull away.

Sitting at the kitchen table, Korra's hands were firmly locked in a grip on the hard oak as her head began to tilt forward until she was looking down at the ground in between her legs. Tenzin, the first to speak up, called for her.

"Korra?"

Pema, standing up from her seat, walked around to Korra and placed a tender hand on the young water tribe girl's shoulder. "Sweetheart, is everything alright?"

Looking up with a start, she shocked Pema when she shot straight up from her chair and slammed her fist on the table, glaring at the golden eyed man who looked so smug there in his chair...

"You are _lying!" _She yelled, pointing at him with her other hand.

Orochimaru, remaining collected, shook his head. "I'm afraid not, my dear. You know him then? You know of the monster... _the fiend_ that I speak of?"

"That is preposterous... how could Korra meet someone in a completely different land where she's never been. He doesn't know about our land, does he?"

"I do not believe so. Young Avatar, tell me... what was his name?"

Korra, frozen in anger, remembered the man sitting alone in the cave. She did not love him, but she did feel a connection to Naruto. That she knew for certain.

"His name..." Korra muttered, her eyes looking back down at the table."

"Was it... per chance, Naruto Uzumaki?"

Throwing her plate off of the table, Korra turned around and stormed off. She had to. She didn't want to show that bastard that she was crying.

* * *

"Lord Orochimaru. I grant your appeal to the court. We are a peaceful nation and a peace-seeking one as well; the tyranny of men will _not_ be tolerated. The Avatar and her team will escort you to your home world together with a small fleet and they will bring this Naruto Uzumaki to justice. You have our undying promise that you and your people will receive justice for the heinous crimes he has committed. Thank you for your time, Lord Orochimaru, and your patience in waiting for our deliberations."

Orochimaru knelt down on his knees and bowed low. His long, dark hair hid the growing smirk on his face. He was certain: Republic City would soon be his.

* * *

Saikhan nodded at his officer to remove Amon's body for incineration. He stood by, watching as the tray that held his corpse was pulled out so they could lift him away, but a scream that he didn't realize came from himself shocked him back a few steps. The rest of his officers poured into the autopsy room and they all crowded around the corpse. It didn't matter how many times they looked at it, but it wasn't there anymore.

Amon's face was completely missing.

* * *

**Author's note:** Alright, so a little background on what happened that took so long for me to write this chapter:

First, my last laptop broke and I can't get the information off of it because I can't see what's on the screen. I tried hooking it up to my tv, but it's being a pain in the ass and I don't know if I'll ever get to it... I lost 15000 words worth of writing that I was going to post for you guys on that laptop.

So then, I borrowed my cousin's laptop (which I'm still using today), and word processor seems to crash every couple of minutes. I tried double saving, triple saving, copy and pasting to other programs, but now I'm just posting my story on tumblr first, writing it there, and then dragging it over to ffnet. So, if you want to find my tumblr account, there is a link to it on #Naruto-Loves-Korra, my group on DeviantArt dot com.

Please, if you're a fan of the pairing, I could _really_ use your support. We need members, followers and donations, as well as submissions! If any of you do requests on DA for drawings, then we need those too!

If you're interested in posting your own fanart, we're also giving away prizes right now.

We're having a Valentine's Day challenge right now for any artists who would like to participate. I am not taking stories at this moment for the challenge, but I _am _taking them as features on our group page. If you would like to submit your NarutoXKorra fanfiction to the group, just become a member and submit it there on DA.

I am so relieved that this chapter is finally posted, but also a little sad. If I ever get a hold of any of my previous writings (25K+ words lost altogether on both laptops) then I'll post them as snippets as a 'writings and muses' story connected to this one. I hope this chapter got the plot moving like it should have, but I am so tired of writing it over and over that I really don't want to even write again for another little while.

I wanted to give up _so many times_ because it was just one thing after another, but I hope that my time was worth it, and that you all enjoy it.

If you can't join my group on DA, please at least leave me a review or favorite my story if you like it. :)


	4. Chapter 3: Magnetism

Chapter 3: Magnetism: Attraction and Repulsion

* * *

Fingering the same kunai he used to prepare the fish, he stepped through the cascading veil of water and plummeted towards the pool below; luminescent at its floor, Naruto could see every fish, snake, and toad as if it were sitting in an aquarium. The rocks from the walls of the cave had gradually made their way into the bottom of the pool after hundreds of years of slow erosion by the river directly above the cave. The floor was sectioned off into glowing rings which gradually became larger and dimmer as the trace elements which washed away from the cave grew distantly further and further from their origin. As he made his way to the floor, he passed several small schools of fish as they traveled together, circling around him for a moment before moving away like a gust of wind underwater. He passed a curious crocodile who seemed to be turning its large trap in his direction. An eel slithered along his leg as he swam deeper still, but, as before, he ignored it and pushed on. Deeper and deeper he went, into the heart of the massive lake which, at the surface, was large enough that if one were to stand up at the top of the wide river which poured into it, the forest and mountain ranges at the other end would look like a green and purple opaque.

Once he reached the floor, Naruto swam back up towards the surface and kicked his legs to keep afloat. He remembered the woman who appeared to him as if in a vision; that woman made entirely out of chakra.

And yet he also distinctly remembered how soft her lips were and the feeling of her sturdy frame as she leaned back into him, moaning into the kiss with a sound which permeated from the base of her diaphragm and gripped him no less fiercely than if she literally held, in the palm of her hand, his heart.

Then, like a minx, she merely reclined back on her palms and watched him through hooded eyes as she allowed him to take her all in. A smoky fog emanated from her eyes and lips, and from when their bodies were pressed together Naruto could feel her flame as it slowly began to engulf him, utterly and irreversibly corrupting him and wrenching away whole parts from his very soul. When the kiss was over, he could still feel and see the small embers all over his body: his hands, his chest and abdomen, his knees-it didn't seem to matter where she touched, every part of his body could be lit up into a smoldering, white hot flame. With his sage powered eyes, he still saw the remnant chakra left over by the beautiful, mysterious spirit 'Korra'.

After she had disappeared, when he closed his eyes and opened them once more, his sage chakra redistributing itself back into the environment around him, he could still remember what it felt like, like a fond memory, but suddenly it became so distant that he nearly screamed through the feeling of overwhelming loss and yearning. Only a few times before had he felt so bitter and alone.

Doubled over in the middle of the cave, Naruto looked up a while later and saw that the fire had gone out. And so he found himself leaving the cave, wanting to distance himself from the spot for just a moment.

What he heard, however, even through the constant barrage of the riverfall above beating into the lake directly behind him, shocked him enough for him to forget the strange spirit which visited him in the cave, if for only a moment.

"Dead last!"

Releasing a sigh, Naruto gripped onto the surface of the water and pulled himself up, bit by bit, until he stood firmly on it, his legs adjusting to the tension of having to balance a steady burst of chakra through the soles in his feet to match the compensating nature of the water.

Looking ahead, he could see a sole man standing in the middle of the biggest lake of Mount Myoboku, called the Great Lake of the Spirit 'Cenote'.

Before turning his complete attention to the man standing further ahead of him, he mused that perhaps he had met the spirit Cenote and whoever named the lake must have gotten it wrong. Deciding then and there, Naruto would forever remember the lake of Myoboku as the Great Lake of the Spirit, 'Korra'.

His attention back on the man who had called him an old nickname he had for him during their academy days, he saw that he was wearing his usual affair; he wore a pale cloak over his shoulders with the insignia of the Uchiha fan sewn onto his back and underneath the billowing folds of the cloak was his tunic which showed his bare chest (a style choice which Naruto thought must have come from the depravity all of those years as a child when he was so used to wearing that uselessly high collar) and a pair of ash-colored, loose-fitting pants. The fray of the cloak brushed along the water while he walked and a torrent wind gushed past him, blowing his hair back while the cloak expanded around him as the air pushed into it due to differences in weight of the dry and wet portions of it. Once the end of the cloak was pulled up from the water, it blew off of the young man's shoulders and, before the wind was even able to carry it back down to its watery grave below, the last Uchiha cleared the distance between them and struck.

With a sound clang, metal striking metal and scraping together as the tension between them built, the two shinobi resumed their dance with death.

"How are things, Sasuke?"

"All is well, Uzumaki."

Grunting, Naruto pushed behind his kunai and yelled out. Sasuke buckled under the brute force and swirved out of the way only to spin back around and slash at the back of Naruto's neck with his blade, the grasscutter.

Pang.

Pressing his shoulder back against the Uchiha's just in time, Naruto brought his kunai up and blocked once more just before his head was cleaned off of his neck. Naruto glared his opponent down, Sasuke mirroring him, and the two struggled to overpower one another while talking as if this were just another day.

"Good to hear. I met a girl."

"Really? Someone who can actually stand your obnoxious personality?"

"Hey."

"And all of that emotional baggage?"

"Hey, c'mon man."

"And that _god awful_ fashion sense... I mean, seriously Naruto... _orange_? Are you a pumpkin's offspring? Did you get in a fight with a bucket of paint? Are you cosplaying a highlighter?"

Naruto began developing an eye-twitch throughout the Uchiha's insults.

"Don't tell me that someone told you pretending to be the sun was in? Just in case: it isn't."

"Are you done?" he asked with a low growl carrying through in his voice.

"No, I'm two or three kunai off the mark: if you're trying to be a carrot, you've got the top wrong. You know that an orange color on some lizards and frogs means they're poisonous, and you wearing their color is sending all of the wrong messages?"

"You know that orange doesn't blend in with anything, right? In fact, I'm sure one day, when they invent automatic mule-drawn-carts, they'll use _that_ color to warn people so that they don't crash when riding them."

"**Alright! **That's it! Now you've crossed the freakin' line, man!"

"Or do you mean, you met a girl, as in, you did dellusionally?"

Taking a deep breath, Naruto closed his eyes for a moment and contemplated unleashing all of his chakra at once on his old friend.

"Ass. I even gave her a kiss. Not sure if I should'a so soon, but, you know."

"No, no I don't. Details, Uzumaki. Details."

Squatting down, forcing Sasuke off-balance as he sliced horizontally over the blond's head, Naruto then extended one leg in between Sasuke's and pushed up to shove him off of his feet and onto his back. Seeing the ploy a mile away, Sasuke rolled his eyes and hopped upwards after being pushed, landing a meter or so away from him on the surface of the water which rocked back and forth with their movements.

"Well, at first I couldn't see her."

"Are you certain she wasn't just in your head?"

"Will you let me finish?" Naruto blurted out, though he tried not to laugh since he had thought of the possibility of such a thing being true. He then stuck out his arm to show his old friend and rival a very rude gesture.

Smirking, Sasuke shrugged. "I'm not stopping you."

"Weird thing to say after I... so anyways. I can't see her, but she's over here eating my food and touching my stuff and..."

"Uzumaki, she grabbed your crotch?!"

"No, you idiot! My pack!"

"Your **pack**? That's what I said."

"Shit, I mean, my _back_pack!"

Making a face that simply said, 'Oh,' Sasuke zipped his lips with his right hand, unable to contain a grin. "Ok, and then?"

"Bastard." Naruto gnashed his teeth together and fancied the many ways in his head that he could kill his friend: having Sakura tickle him until he laughed himself to death, snap of the neck, kunai in the throat, cutting off certain appendages... some were obviously more gruesome than others and the possibilities were endless. "I was able to see her while using my sage chakra. It was so weird. She looked like she was made out of chakra."

Sasuke blinked, "You idiot, we are all made out of chakra. It's in every one of the cells of our body. It is the very reason for our existence.

"Well, whatever. Then! Then, how come when I use sage mode any other time I don't see what I see when I see her?"

Furrowing his brow, Sasuke said, "Say that again?"

"How come when I use sage..." Realizing what Sasuke meant by that, he stopped and said, "You're such a prick."

Laughing, Sasuke stepped to the side when Naruto rushed him, spinning around to once again attempt to slice his friend's head off. Naruto, expecting the ploy, brought his kunai up to deflect the attack once more, but was shocked to feel that the blade had instead embedded itself deep into his abdomen, cutting upwards into his liver.

Groaning, Naruto spat out blood. Sasuke smirked and dug the blade even deeper into Naruto's belly when suddenly his body popped into a cloud of smoke that obscured the Uchiha's vision completely for several meters.

"Damn it, Uzumaki! Your clones are getting more and more durable every time I see you!"

"I do it for you, buddy!" Naruto called back from outside of the smoke.

Glaring, Sasuke crouched down slightly and then shot straight up into the air, his eyes scanning the surface of the water as he searched for the blond shinobi.

"Up here, smart guy." Looking up, Sasuke saw Naruto forming a hand seal with his kunai in hand as he descended upon the Uchiha, ready to strike at his skull.

Spinning mid-air, Sasuke immediately reacted to the kunai that was brought down over the top of his head by bringing his straight sword upwards to deflect it while his body shifted. His legs now facing the sky, Sasuke found himself at a disadvantage as Naruto now had gravity on his side.

"You think you're clever, don't you, Uzumaki?"

"Eh. No, but it's not hard to be smart when the friend you're being compared to only has air in his head."

Baring his teeth, Sasuke growled and grabbed Naruto by the collar, gripping it tightly as he flipped the orientation of their bodies and turned gravity against the blond as he pulled him towards an area where the water was much shallower. Just before they crashed into the water below, Naruto dug his kunai into Sasuke's shoulder forcing him to release his grip on his collar as pain surged through the Uchiha's upper-torso, and then he kicked off of him and landed safely away, while Sasuke merely turned mid air and landed on one knee right in front of the waterfall.

Balancing himself on the water, Naruto twirled the bloody kunai on his finger and then gripped it firmly with the knife pointing downwards, as was his usual grip.

"Good moves."

"Yeah, I learned them from shinobi weekly. They have this really cool article called 'Teach me how to shinobi.' First you put your arms out front, lean side to side. After that is when you can really get down."

Sasuke's face, at this point, was red with anger. He bit his lip for a moment, drawing blood, and it was easy to tell that his temper would only get worse from then on out. "Everything is just a game to you, isn't it?"

Naruto shook his head, "No. Throwing out the trash isn't a game, but I do it anyways. Someone has to."

Surprised by the clever quip, Sasuke's stance slowly began to foul. Once he established that he just got tongue-lashed by the guy he has been calling idiot and dead-last all of these years, Sasuke yelled out, "Enough! Naruto, come at me."

"Bro, I like you, but not that way." Naruto said suggestively, frowning.

Anger grabbing a hold of Sasuke, the raven haired boy yelled, discharging nearly all of the air in his lungs as he blindly charged the blond, sword raised above his head with both hands gripping its hilt until his knuckles turned pearly white.

Grinning, Naruto gave the thumbs up, and suddenly a very fine line pulled taut only a few steps in front of the Uchiha. Standing far on opposite sides of the lake, two shadow clones snickered as they pulled on their own ends of the line.

Needless to say, Sasuke's face slammed headfirst into the water as he doubled over after tripping on the line, causing a large splash that shot water up into the air all around them.

Laughing until tears broke through, Naruto let out a pleased sigh and wiped at his face with his sleeve, shaking his head throughout.

"You're too much kunai and too little handle, Sasuke."

Looking down where he had fallen, Naruto flinched when he saw that his friend was no longer there. And when he felt two hands grip his ankles from underneath the water, without so much as the lightest splash, Naruto knew he was in for it.

He looked down and saw Sasuke's red, glowing eyes as his wet hair floated on the water as his face and the top of his head barely broke the surface.

"Son of a..."

As he was pulled down, deep into the water where they were bathed in the bright light of the lake's floor, Naruto felt the Uchiha's hands pull on his body so that he could latch onto his back, his legs wrapping around his waist and then digging in between his knees to keep him from moving while his arms locked themselves around his neck as he began to put pressure on the back of his head.

Struggling at first, as he was losing air rapidly, Naruto realized it was futile and so he closed his eyes and felt for the chakra around him as his eyes began to change.

Looking up, Naruto's neck clenched and tightened the muscles in his torso as he closed his fists and bent his toes. He then gathered all of the chakra he had gathered into one small point at the base of his stomach and clenched it tightly there, molding and churning it until it all rested on a single spot as if on the tip of his finger.

With a sudden release, Naruto propelled Sasuke away with a fire-less explosion that made the water expand at the surface and a circular pocket appear under water, causing Naruto to fall from mid air to land feet first at the bottom of the sphere. Sasuke, meanwhile, was sent barreling through the water, rolling about in a frenzied state until finally momentum gave way to the varied friction of the water and he came to a complete stop.

When the two of them came back up to the surface for air, Naruto was breathing heavily, but Sasuke was coughing and choking out water that he had inadvertently swallowed.

Standing up, Naruto walked over to his friend and patted him gently on the back, saying, "Hey man, you alright?"

Drawing his grasscutter blade from its sheathe on the rope of his waist, Sasuke struck upwards in one swift motion, leaving a clean line of blood that cut up from Naruto's right hip to his left shoulder, across his abdomen and chest. Naruto yelled out at the pain and grit his teeth as he took a few steps back.

Steadying himself as he gripped his kunai in his hand, he pointed his arm outward and turned his body slightly as he stepped forward with one leg.

Sasuke's breathing slowed as his eyes focused entirely on the blond. Naruto's stance tightened for a second as he willed away the pain. Once he loosened back up, Naruto eyed the Uchiha with contempt while the look he received back did not seem much different.

Both of the shinobi met at the center of the water and struck once more, going slice for slice, throwing barrages of attacks that were getting progressively faster and deadlier. Just when Naruto thought his kunai might break, he and Sasuke's flurry was brought to a loud, ringing halt when the two blades collided and a vibration so powerful shook the two warriors to their very core.

Turning around, Naruto walked away a few steps as he shook out his arms, groaning in frustration at the pulsing pain he felt all of the way up his arms and to his neck and shoulders. Sasuke sucked in a sharp intake of breath and looked away, hands shaking after he sheathed away his grasscutter.

"What the hell!" Naruto whined, grabbing at his neck.

Sasuke shook his head, "That was awful."

Nodding, Naruto said, "Yeah... next time?"

Sasuke groaned. "We said that one or both of us would die _this_ time. What the hell is going on, anyways?"

Naruto shrugged. "Eh... it's weird... like we're propelling each other away like two magnets with opposite poles."

"Spot on analogy." Sasuke admitted, frowning at the pain that coursed all of the way up his back. "Except, each time we meet, the propulsion is getting stronger and stronger... This is the fifth time in the past two months, did you know that?"

"Oh, how sweet, you were keeping count!"

"Go to hell."

"Already there." Winking, Naruto grinned and started walking away. "Later, Sasuke."

"Who says we're done here?!"

"The powers that be, of course!"

Sasuke, exasperated with the current situation and hurting from the pain in his arms and neck, turned around and walked the other way. Maybe next time.

Naruto stopped and turned around to look at Sasuke as he walked across the massive Lake of the Great Spirit, "Korra". Looking down, he unzipped his jacket and saw that the stone he collected near the toad statue was as lightweight as ever when it was around _him_. Looking back up at Sasuke, he held up the stone and, as distance grew between them, found that the stone was slowly getting heavier and heavier, until it became so incredibly difficult to carry that Naruto had to use his sage chakra to be able to hold it up at all.

"What are you, exactly?" Naruto said, smirking at the jagged-edge half of a disk whose history was shrouded, at least to him, in mystery.

* * *

Korra stood at the bow end of the deck of the ship, gazing onward towards the horizon as she thought carefully of what was going to happen when she arrived in Naruto's land. They were about to reach the massive whirlpool when Orochimaru walked up behind her, sluggishly and shakily as he made his way towards her with a few queasy groans due to the rocking and swaying of the large ship they were on, the Feathered Serpent, even though it was such a large ship and should have hardly moved at all. The Feathered Serpent was well on its way. It was commissioned for use by the council of Republic City to General Bumi for the Avatar's expedition to the New World, as they had begun calling the land across the sea from which Orochimaru and Naruto originated from.

Turning to look back at the pale man, Korra groaned, "Listen, Orochi-man. Tenzin made me tell you I was sorry already, Ok? I don't want to talk about it anymore."

Orochimaru frowned and shook his head solemnly. "No, no. This is nothing about that. I understand how... first impressions can be deceiving."

Korra's eyes narrowed slightly. _Pema and Tenzin's first impressions were definitely off the mark._

"Avatar Korra, I beg of you, please do not judge until you have seen for your own eyes what has been done to my people. I know it might be hard to believe, but, unless he cleaned up the bodies, which I doubt he did as he rarely does after an invasion, then you will be able to see the effects of his deadliest techniques. He made me watch while he killed my key soldiers, then he cooked and force-fed...

Choking up, Orochimaru looked away for a moment as Korra slowly began turning around as she listened to the sorrow and pain in the man's voice. Was he being genuine? She hoped he wasn't... for her sake.

"He fed their bodies to my youngest shinobi, many of them were forced to cannibalize their very own teachers."

"That's awful," Korra muttered, her heart twisting and wrenching in her chest.

"He used a special technique to kill the strongest of them first called the Rasengan, or Spiraling sphere. It leaves a very distinct mark, as one might know merely from its namesake, and it should be the proof that the Uzumaki was the culprit."

"I'd like to see that, but how would I compare it?"

Orochimaru frowned when she asked him this. He shuddered as if the very thought of having to interact with the blond again drove through his body as if his blood had frozen over. "I suppose... we shall have to capture him alive and draw the information out of him."

Korra nodded. "I would very much like to talk to him myself and ask him a few questions. Some very important questions."

"With the spirited way in which you defended him before, it would seem to me that you somehow established some sort of relationship with him... are you certain you never visited our home and he has never visited yours?"

Korra rolled her eyes, "Yeah, I told you that already," she said, a little annoyed at having to repeat herself so many times after nearly every family member and friend took her aside to talk.

Her friends and boyfriend, Asami, Bolin and Mako, were in one of the sub-decks in their rooms while Tenzin, her airbending master had remained at home to care for his family and to continue his duties as city councilman. His brother, Bumi, was the captain and leader of the expedition under general Iroh's name.

Together with them was a small fleet made up of metal benders from the police force, worker force fire and earthbenders and a few hired mercenary water benders, as well as several nonbending soldiers who merely joined the expedition and manhunt because the promise of a new, majestic land across the sea. With over four hundred people altogether, Korra felt even more strongly that something very wrong was going on here. Why were there so many people for a simple mission when only a little less than fifty was needed to run the giant ship; plus, with Orochimaru and Team Avatar would have been more than sufficient.

Korra couldn't stand the feeling of dread that percolated from the veil of the pursuit of 'so-called' justice at the expense of so many people.

"I hope that I have gotten through to you. I am sorry to have dragged you into this though you seemed less than enthusiastic about assisting me... if it weren't for you, peace and justice would never be possible for the victims of the demon's onslaught."

Bowing deeply and turning to walk back into the hull, Orochimaru nearly smiled when he saw the look on her face from the corner of his eye as she started to look like she was coming around.

Korra sighed and rested on her arms against the balustrade that surrounded the front of the ship. "Naruto..." she said, closing her eyes to remember the kiss one last time before they arrived.

Once they arrived, Korra found that it looked strange, but wasn't much different from the place she just left. The few areas that were populated were so small that it was hard to distinguish anything different from the people either, other than they seemed to be developing their technologies at a different rate. It was the strangest thing! They had colored boxes that showed pictures on a glass screen! And also small portable devices which could be used as long-distance communication devices.

But, they didn't have anything like the Sato-mobile or even large electricity plants like the ones in Republic City. Their technologies were also very inconsistent. As they passed through village after village in a small group consisting of the Avatar and her team along with a few of the best of the benders, they found that they were reaching the walls of Otogakure

The first thing that Korra saw, however, caused her to whisper hoarsely, "_No!_"; right at the entrance, where a knocked over sign read "Welcome to Otogakure", bodies of the dead lined both sides of the main road, the smell of death oozing in the air so strongly that it made Korra want to vomit.

She looked at each of the corpses and saw various signs of torture and murder, but the most prevalent was that of the strange circular shape that seemed capable of tearing through any armor or vest that any of the dead shinobi and civilians might have worn.

Orochimaru took in a deep breath, then knelt down before the entrance to the village and lowered his head until his forehead was touching the dirt floor and his nose was blowing up the dust of the dirt road.

Further in, there were bodies of children that were corralled into houses and then lit on fire or killed by kunai, a knife which Orochimaru explained to Korra was quite generic among shinobi, though Naruto apparently was very fond of it.

Korra saw the decaying corpses of everyone, including children and the elderly. Orochimaru explained that, in deep graves that were called "the pens", the bodies of the dead were buried on top of the ones of the living and then they were buried alive that way. By making the walls of their grave steep and leaving them only more and more rotting flesh to eat, the few that survived for more than a few weeks died from various things such as infections or dead bodies piling on top of them and trapping and asphyxiating them.

Korra couldn't take it all in. Instead, the only thing she could do was sit down where she was and meditate.

* * *

**Author's note: **Thank you all very much for reading, reviewing an favoriting my story and me! I felt so loved that I decided to post a second chapter (that really should have been a part of the last one but I didn't have the spirit last time to finish it up) sooner than what was probably expected. It's my gift to my readers who wanted me to update right away :)

So, computer problems pretty much worked out, I think I should be able to update a little more regularly. So tell me, what did you think? I skipped the boring parts so we can get to the action right away, and the gore I would have limited some more but I wanted it to have at least a small effect on you guys. Besides, there are plenty of even more screwed up things in the background that you may or may not have guessed at yet. It has to do with the conditions of many of the bodies. Also, I hoped the gore was balanced out by the bit of comedic dialogue between Naruto and Sasuke. Yes, Sasuke is very cheery at the moment, but there are some underlying reasons for that. Rest assured, he and many other characters from both sides of the crossover will be important actors in the drama!

One last thing, I am looking for a beta. I have tried using the beta reader part of the site before with little luck. If you are interested, I would prefer someone who has written a few stories themselves of either the Naruto and/or Korra universes. If not, that's fine too, I suppose, as long as I receive a sample of your own writing to see if it meshes well with mine. Please send me a private message instead of a review for this request. The review portion of the site is just for that, reviews.


	5. Chapter 4: Kissing the Silver Tongue

Chapter 4: Kissing the Silver Tongue

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Naruto or TLOK. Naruto is owned by Kishimoto and TLOK is owned by Nickelodeon and its creators: DiMartino and Konietzko. Thank them for such wonderful universes in which we can engross ourselves in and become utterly, blissfully lost within them.

* * *

A reconnaissance unit made up of six shinobi, two teams of three, moved in through the dense forest in as quiet a manner as possible. Their system made use of sign language to send a message across longer distances; the two shinobi closest to the large metal ship floating on the water assessed the situation, counted the amount of people left behind to work around the ship and tracked any of the adventurous that dared to trek the dense forests in the countries between the shore and Oto. The unit was spying on Oto's neighboring countries after having heard of the massacre that took place there. They were gathering information along with three other teams that were moving around the neutral countries and digging information on Oto and its current leader, believed, at the time, to be someone other than Orochimaru.

Using her hands, a young kunoichi signaled that she would remain behind with the other team to watch, but the two of her own team needed to head back as soon as possible to Konoha.

When the runner in between put his binoculars back in his kunai pouch and made his way far enough that he was sure his communications signal couldn't be picked up, he hit the button on his radio and began by saying, "Dogfight, Actual-over."

There was nothing but static coming in through the radio for a while, but after several seconds it suddenly buzzed to life and he heard his team leader saying, "This is Dogfight. Come in-over."

"Dogfight, this is DayOwl, do you copy?-over."

"Copy, DayOwl. What's your status?-over."

"Uh... back on the trail. PrettyBird signed a message for you-over."

"Copy so far. What is the message-over?"

" 'Dog. Day. Contact. Home. ASAP. Pretty. Eyes.-wait...

…

"Ship. Metal. Never seen before. Red. Fire. Sign. Foreigners. Will send. Messenger. Hawk. Need. Reinforcements.-over."

"Understood. Time on DayOwl return?-over."

"Negatory, Dogfight."

…

"DayOwl?-over."

…

… … …

"DayOwl, do you copy?"

…

"DayOwl, this is Dogfight, I repeat: do you copy?!"

Suddenly, a feminine voice appeared on the radio. Unsure who it was, Dogfight listened intently and was weary to find that the voice did not belong to PrettyBird. "Dogfight, this is Polarbear Dog-over."

"Read you...Who are you, exactly?-over."

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"What did you do with Day?"

"Day is day'd (pronounced: day-yud), Dog."

The radio broke into static once more as the stranger's words repeated through to Dogfight at the base. "Day is day'd."

* * *

_Aang, where are you? I need your help..._

_I don't know what to do Aang..._

_please..._

_I didn't ask to meet him, Aang. You sent me to him. Why?_

_Please, tell me._

_**Answer me!**_

Korra's meditation eventually came to an end. She couldn't seem to find the focus that she had before to contact him. Why would Aang have the two of them meet? Why did the Avatars wait this long to meet with the New World? Why her?

Korra felt her eyelids sticking together momentarily as she opened her dry eyes to a completely different scene than the one she saw before her meditation:

The pile of bodies on either side of the main road was completely missing and the smell that assaulted her nose and mouth before was covered by the strong ashy scent of smoke. As she stood up, she saw that from the rising pillars of black smoke in the distance, deep within the heart of the village, a bright fire was burning, spreading through the inky darkness of the moonless night. She could feel the sweat trickling down her neck from the tension she felt during her meditation and her muscles were feeling stretched as if attached by thin coils. She recalled something that Naruto said right before she left. What had he meant by it?.

_My eyes can see the energy around us... but you are just so different. You are made... entirely out of that energy, chakra. It's incredible!_

_… chakra._

Something in her head clicked and, with a sudden sense of direction, Korra stalked into the village like a tigerhorse on the prowl. She walked past the newly marked graves and the realization that she had been meditating for the better part of the afternoon and well into the evening dawned on her. The overwhelming sense of terror from the sight of all of the bodies was replaced with one of terrible sadness at the thought of all of those gravestones, blank and nameless, faceless; each of them killed, and for what?

No reason, she decided, was reason enough for the slaughter that took place here.

Korra passed by several huts and houses that were lit systematically, and thoroughly. She saw a few firebenders nearby, controlling the flames so that they only spread as much as was necessary, and not a couple of meters away from the burning houses was the large encampment; forty or so iron-framed tents were put up just a short distance away from the rice paddy fields that descended down into the valley and forest immediately beyond the village.

Walking up to one of the tents, she called out to the person or persons inside, saying, "Where can I find Lord Orochimaru?"

After a short rustling sound and a few strange yelps, Korra was pleasantly surprised to see Bolin peek his head out. "Whoah, hey Kor. I was worried about you since you were out there meditating the whole time. Mako swore it was because you didn't want to help clean up the bodies, but I know better."

"Thank you, Bolin. You're a good friend. Something I don't think I could say about him right now." Korra uttered in a voice akin to a low growl.

"O...K. So, whatcha need to talk to him for?"

"I need to find... something out." Korra offered, her eyes shifting away slowly.

"Kor, you don't sound like yourself... what's wrong? Want to talk?"

"No, I don't."

"But Korra, you know that you can always talk to me about anything, right?"

"Cut the crap, Bolin." Korra said, eyes snapping back at him. She narrowed them fiercely and said, beyond irritated, "Listen... I like you, Bolin. But I want to be straight with you: I'll never like you more than as a friend. So stop being so... so..."

"Helpful? I thought that's what I was supposed to be... as a friend." Bolin offered, eyes turning with his head as he entered the tent once more.

Taken aback, Korra cursed when she realized what she had just said. She opened the flap to the tent and stepped in, calling to him. "Wait. Hold on a second.

"Bolin," she began, feeling pretty low because of the way she just concentrated all of her anger and frustration on him, knowing full well it wasn't his fault. She could tell it had hurt him; he couldn't even look at her when he spoke.

"If you follow the main road all of the way down there is an auditorium that is built low into the ground. It's hard to see from here, so just keep walking up there."

"Bolin... thank you, and I'm sorry."

Bolin stopped and turned around to look at her, his eyes searching for something in her that he wasn't seeing.

"I know you are going through alot right now Korra... and I'll always be your friend, no matter what you say...

Bolin stepped past her and stood in front of the tent flap, holding it open for her. Taking the hint, Korra walked back out of the tent and turned back around when she heard him say:

"...but you need to quit being such a bitch."

Closing the tent behind him, Bolin left before Korra could even begin to stammer out a response to what he had just said.

Did Bolin just... holy shit...

She had to pry herself away from the tent in order to keep her anger in check and to keep from ripping apart the tent so that she could get to him and punch his face in.

She hated to admit it, but his words dug into her skin. She wanted to ask herself, _How dare he?_ and she wanted to cuss him out and yell at him, smack him across the face-just _anything_. But she knew better... she deserved that... after all, he was only trying to be a friend, nothing more.

_How could I just make light of his feelings? Bolin is my friend... and even if I don't feel the same way, I shouldn't have used that against him like that just because I was angry at someone else... actually... I'm angry with myself, aren't I..._

Biting her lip, Korra tried to release the guilt while she walked solemnly down the middle path. She saw several people running around on her way over. She could recognize most of them due to the familiar clothing they wore as the crew to the large ship. She saw many of them seated near small campfires, listened to some of the familiar music like It took a few minutes for her to walk up the trail to her destination and when she did she was left awestruck.

Below her, she could see down from the top of the crater-like opening in the ground, was a massive, round building that was built entirely out of interlocking stones that were placed together intricately and had no visible mortar to stick the pieces together like most buildings she knew of back home. It was surrounded on all sides by hundreds of rice paddies which glistened like liquid fire from the light of the burning buildings behind her. At the base of the large building was a deep trench all around it in order to prevent any damage from possible mudslides due to flooding.

The path which she took to reach the strange building ended when she arrived at the steep edge of the massive paddie farm. Searching around, Korra couldn't find an easy way down. Every way she looked was a three meter drop into one of the pools of water or one of their borders, and each level after that was exactly the same, though they were not necessarily built in rows but more of like in a 'brick' or zig-zag pattern.

Frowning, Korra looked around, but any of the people she had passed before were now getting ready to sleep after completing the horrible job of searching for, gathering and burying the bodies of the hundreds of people that were slaughtered here. Even while just looking at the building, assessing the way it was built, she had to ask herself how was she supposed to get in in the first place? There appeared to be no door or bridge across the gap of the trench dug around it.

The building, with its interlocking stones which were placed intricately, carved and sanded down, creating a dome or mushroom shape near the top, was decorated vividly with the image of a feathered serpent that seemed to travel along its curved walls.. At first, Korra thought it was a big, green painted dragon; its fierce eye, in profile view, pierced through her. She squinted because she couldn't quite believe her eyes at first: the eye seemed to be a ruby the size of a grapefruit inserted into the 'socket' or niche in the wall. She noted that the rest of the creature's body was lined with shards of jade and serpentine that were placed in a specific, scale-like pattern that was also 'feathered', or, more specifically, scales which spread out and were long like the feathers of a bird.

She gasped deeply when she remembered to breathe. If this was anything to go by, the artwork in this world was incredible... she wondered if it was Orochimaru who had commissioned this or if it had been made before his lifetime. It seemed like far too much to complete in the short span of a single generation.

Looking closer, Korra saw that the center of the building was actually open, creating a small inner courtyard that was barely visible from where she stood. Deciding she would enter through there, Korra waved her hands up from her hips and smoothly swerved them in the air above her head before opening her hands and lifting some of the water in the rice paddies. Jumping on, Korra propelled herself upwards into the air using a spiraling pillar of water and released it as she flipped through the night sky toward the center of the massive auditorium, as Bolin had called it.

Using airbending, she extended her arms downwards and eased her landing, her body turning mid air as she came to a slow, gentle stop on the rim around the large center stage before her. Her eyes widened at the sight below. This building was like a massive coliseum!

In the center was a stage, and from it she could see Orochimaru standing in the center with Lin Beifong and Saikhan, speaking to a small audience of people Korra figured must have been the main part of the crew. Confused that she could not hear even the slightest sound coming from the stage, nor even the sound of the wind that she could feel blowing past her fingertips and through her hair, Korra decided it must have to do with the strange structure of the large building.. She shrugged and dropped down, but her breath hitched as she fell when suddenly she could hear, as clear as if he were standing directly in front of her, what he was saying.

"Your goodwill shall not go without compensation! I will find a way, through my allies and some of the riches from the treasury of the village and our country, to pay you all for your efforts. I welcome any of you to stay here to work.

"We produced, in this very land, much of the rice which is consumed throughout the elemental nations. We also once supplied large amounts of jade and other minerals that are found in our rich mountains and caverns. I also have ties with the larger cities and many of you here can assimilate and find jobs if you wish in those cities, or you may take my offer and stay here to work the land as necessary. Those of you who are the representatives of your many great cities in your world, I beg of you to establish reciprocating trade policies with ours, so that we both may prosper!

"I understand that many of your people are poor, looking for work, many of those here in this very audience today! But here, in my world, we are rich and bountiful, and I would love to share what I have with each and every one of you. All I ask is for you to care for the land as if it were the very one where you were born on, and that you pay me a tribute for the land which I will give to you. I am excited to be the first to bridge the gap between our two worlds, both of them: nations of the elements.

"It will be a difficult journey from here on out. And we will face opposition from the tyrannies of the South and the West. They are called Konoha in the Land of Fire, Suna in the Land of Wind, and Iwa in the Land of Stone. When you first see them, I warn you now so that you know for the future: they will lie. They will lie, and lie, and lie, and continue to do so until you find that their lies have become truth. But what sort of truth would you be willing to live with? One founded in lies, or a truth of truths? We must negate their lies and abandon our ears to their silver tongues. They would have you believe that _I _am the enemy, even after the slaughter that you and your very own helped clean up here today! They would have you believe that no one died. That only they suffered losses. They would lie to you! Lie so plainly and clearly, so sure of face, that you might, for the briefest of instants, find yourself believing their lies. Please, I warn you... do not allow their tongues to manipulate what you have seen with your very own eyes today!"

Pausing for a moment, Orochimaru sighed and looked downwards, as if he were remembering the people that he lost. The crowd murmured quietly for a moment, exchanging ideas. Talking about his sincerity. About the burden he had to bear.

And Orochimaru loved every second of it.

Looking upwards, he continued, "Our main allies are in Kumo, in the Land of Lightning to the North, though they are only allies in that they are dependent on the use of our land for trade off seas. We control this land which divides they and Konoha, and so we pose a threat to either side, for if we lock our borders here then both of them will suffer. Even though my people are gone, do not underestimate the power and the resources that I possess! For if I truly wanted to, then I could, on my own, completely cut off the two nations trading through my land.

"I am the only remaining member of a group of elite shinobi known as the 'Sannin', or the three ninja. We were named by our greatest enemy at a time when I once shared the same ideals of Konoha and it's people, before the young and arrogant Naruto Uzumaki began gathering supporters for his devious plot to control the rest of our elemental countries. It was the teachings passed down by my once comrade and friend, later bitter enemy, which corrupted the young man and turned him into a monster worse than the one he carries, and into the burden on mankind as he is known today."

Orochimaru smiled sadly, shaking his head. "Pity him, only because he is a product of his environment... but remember what he has done, and what he will continue to do... what he will not hesitate to do..." He then motioned to Lin. She eyed him carefully and walked what Korra believed to be a young boy out onto the center of the stage. Orochimaru smiled at him and offered his hand. Taking it, the boy looked up at the pale faced man inquisitively while he turned back to the audience of about forty and knelt down beside the young boy.

"It was never my intention to do so. But after all that has happened, this may change... for instance, this boy, named Otoki, after the name of the land, for he is an orphan who survived the slaughter, has had to endure the pain of losing his parents due to the greed of the men living in Konoha, Iwa and Suna!

"Otoki," Orochimaru turned to the boy and said, smiling, "Thank you for coming up here. You're a very brave young man. Lady Beifong shall have you escorted back to your quarters where you can play. Does that sound good to you?"

Otoki nodded, his eyes looking up past the audience straight at Korra. It took quite awhile for him to pry his eyes away, but he soon turned as Orochimaru guided him back to Lin.

A little surprised, Korra flinched at the sudden stare and waved curtly. She then walked down the steps until she could see a little clearer and sat down on one of the many rows of long, stone benches.

Orochimaru looked up as well and nodded to Lin, who then took the boy back and walked him off of the stage down some steps nearby and out of sight.

"As I told you before, The Auditorium is specially designed using sound suppressing and boosting seals to effectively eliminate sound from bouncing out from over the top and bottom of the stadium. He can no longer hear, which is imperative because what I have to tell you next is quite gruesome; the young boy was forced, by Oto's oppressors, to live for three whole weeks off of the scraps of human flesh. His father allowed himself to be taken apart, piece by piece, to stay alive long enough to keep the meat on his bones edible, so that his mother and son could survive. In the end, she also took her life for his sake... and so this boy, having to cannibalize on his very own family, is now forced to endure with this harsh reality for the rest of his life... he will forever live knowing that his parents gave their lives to ensure his survival... and that he played a gruesome part in their deaths... for now, we shall not tell him what happened exactly, as he seems to have forgotten the memory of what happened in one of the 'pens'."

"Excuse me!" Korra called down. She was troubled deeply by the very idea of having to eat another human to survive, and the fact that the little boy that had just stared directly at her was a survivor of that kind of circumstance, but one thing still nagged at her. "How did he survive in the pens only on food?"

Orochimaru solemnly replied, "First and foremost, welcome, Avatar Korra. I am honored to have you here, and very glad that you were able to complete your meditation in time to hear what I had to say. I hope you did not find it troublesome to enter The Auditorium."

"Not really... and thank you. So how did he survive? Three weeks? What about water? How did they cook the meat?" The crowd looked back and forth between Orochimaru and her as they spoke.

"The pen where he was thrown into, it was deep into the ground and nearby a shoddily designed rice paddie. The weak walls gave way and any water that had flooded there was pouring directly into the pen. They had a cloudy but available water supply for a long while... now how they kept it clean for that long is truly a wonder... perhaps they carved out a hole in the wall of the deep pen and defecated there. As for cooking the meat, I'm not sure that they did. It's a miracle that the boy survived to see today."

Sorry she asked, Korra just nodded and sighed, reclining in her seat as she shook her head. What sort of monster is he...

Her memory recalled the mind-numbing kiss that they shared and she wanted to scream.

Korra watched as Orochimaru began speaking once more.

"As for Naruto Uzumaki, the perpetrator of this heinous slaughter, I intend to seek out justice!"

The crowd stood clamoring altogether in agreement.

"I demand that the leaders of his country hold themselves accountable for the actions of their 'hero', unlike in the past when they have wont to do anything but, and I do this with indisputable evidence now that I have some of the corpses of the deceased preserved in autopsy thanks to the help of your waterbenders and experienced doctors. The technique he used to kill many of my people leaves a very distinct, spiral mark. Without a doubt, his country will have to oust him or wage war. And if it is war that they want, then war I will give to them."

Their rising clamoring turned into all-out cheering.

"He will not get away."

Louder.

"He cannot hide."

Louder still.

"And my village, Otoki and myself included, and all of you who choose to stay and become apart of it, shall not tolerate nor stand for his oppressive, demonic ways any longer! He and his country have left me nothing! Nothing, if it weren't for the single, scarred life spared by my god, but at the very least I can do something to make it right for Otoki!

"I call for change! For an end, and a new beginning! For the lives lost of the innocent! For Otogakure! For the Elemental Nations! For both the Old World, and the New!"

Standing, the entire crowd cheered for him. Korra stared on in a daze.

The clapping and cheering lasted so long, Korra barely realized that she was clapping her hands together as well.

After Orochimaru's speech, Korra found herself walking through The Auditorium behind Lin, following patiently as the chief of police had requested that she stay quiet and keep up. Not quite sure what to make of it, Korra just followed along.

It wasn't until about ten minutes in that Korra finally had enough and stopped. Lin turned to her and said, "We are not far away enough. These walls are designed to listen."

Korra looked around and narrowed her eyes, "This is far enough. Are you crazy? I don't hear any echoes or anything. How do you know someone can hear us?"

Grabbing the young woman by her collar, Lin yanked her over to one of the walls and pushed her face up against one of the seals embedded there. It was small and painted in the same color as the wall, so it was nearly impossible to see just passing by in the dank hallways.

"Hey, I see it, I see it. Can you let go of me now, please?"

Lin obliged, then turned away and muttered, "This isn't right."

"I know... all of those people... they were..."

"... moved. Their bodies were moved and piled there. The pens were covered in these same seals... this whole place... hidden from view... it looks like nothing but a farming community, but I can feel with my earthbending all of the secret paths and tunnels, all of the hidden room and compartments... they are clean. Nothing is in any of them."

Korra felt a bit of hope shine through the cloudy sky. "What are you saying?"

Lin turned, walking around, pacing back and forth. She didn't look like the chief of police she usually was. She was still angry, but not calm like she usually was under pressure.

"Lin... Beifong, I mean. What are you saying?" Korra asked again, not aware that she was holding her breath for the answer.

"I'm not sure... these seals on the walls of the pen say one thing... but if it's true that only Naruto Uzumaki can use the supposed 'technique' called the Rasengan, then it would be hard to convince anyone that he isn't the monster that Orochimaru portrays him to be."

Korra frowned, shaking her head. "But... why would he go through all of this trouble? I mean, didn't he get sent here on that ship, trapped? I know now why there were so many people accompanying us. Most of them are people that were sent to stay here as colonists, weren't they? The group of benders that was sent to help us catch Naruto is smaller than what they originally offered to send."

Lin's jaw was wired shut. She looked at the avatar closely and then leaned in, whispering, "Korra... there's something more... something terrible that has happened back home. Right as we were leaving."

"Back home?" Korra repeated in confusion. "What do you mean something terrible?! Tenzin and his family! Are they alright?!"

"Yes... it's not that, Korra... it's..." Lin looked away for a moment, gathering the courage to say what she had to say without feeling like a complete nutcase.

"Amon's face is missing."

"Missing?"

Lin, flaring up, snapped at Korra, "What are you, a damn parrot?! Yes, missing! Korra, would you stop acting so afraid. You get this way every time we talk about Amon or the equalists... and now about this boy, Naruto."

Beifong watched Korra's reaction carefully. What had the strange boy told her in her vision? How did they meet in the first place? Through Aang's intervention? When Korra didn't say anything, Lin said, "Korra, how did you meet him, exactly?"

Korra shook her head. "I don't know. It was like if I were a spirit or, like he said, pure energy. He said he couldn't see me until he used a special technique that changed the way his eyes looked. Once he did that, he was able to see me, but said I looked like I was made out of energy."

"And what happened?"

"We ate... we talked for a bit... I asked him a question... and he kissed me."

Lin blinked. "Kissed? On the lips?"

"I guess polly wants a cracker." Korra muttered, rolling her eyes.

"Very funny, Avatar." Lin stuck her tongue out and Korra did the same, then the two of them chuckled, recalling a similar memory. "So you kissed..."

"He kissed me. I didn't ask for it."

"You didn't say no?"

"How could I?" Korra whispered, shuddering. She remembered how he bit onto her lower lip and pulled back, licking her lips and turning his head as he pulled simultaneously on the small of her back, drawing her deeper into the kiss. She remembered the smacking sounds of their wet lips as they kissed; yes, _they, as_ she recalled reciprocating with gusto, pushing her chest against his as her hands found their way onto the muscles of his neck, feeling the way they tensed and relaxed as he used different muscles in his face to move his head and mouth to kiss her. She remembered his heartbeat and the way it sped up and eventually beat together with hers, synchronizing like the ticks of a pair of clocks that were were being adjusted carefully by an expert clockmaker to beat at precisely the exact same tempo. It seemed like every time that she recalled the memory of what happened, the kiss became more explicit to her mind, clearing up some sort of fog that had covered her memories during her brief stay in the blue cave.

Suddenly, Korra couldn't believe what she just heard. Lin chuckled.

Her chuckle turned into a hearty laugh while Korra just glared at her. "What is so darn funny?"

Beifong smirked and leaned in, saying, "That's how Tenzin first kissed me... he didn't give me an option. Just grabbed me and... kissed me and … til this day I still remember our first kiss."

Korra blushed. "That's.. very revealing, Chief Beifong."

She scoffed, "I told you before to call me Lin, Korra."

"Right, I remember, but you also didn't drop a bomb like that one on me... it sounds wackier if I say Chief Beifong anyways."

Lin rolled her eyes. "So... how was the kiss..."

Korra winced. "I don't want to talk about it."

Lin laughed, "That good, huh?"

Groaning, Korra tried to cover her blushing face as she dug her eyes into her open palms.

"The kind of kiss that bothers you worse and worse the more that you think about it, isn't it?"

Korra looked up from her palms with her jaws wide open. "H-how the heck do you know about that! I never told anyone..."

"Korra... it was... is the same for me with Tenzin. He was such a priss, such a goody-two-shoes... oh, how wonderful that dirty, probing kiss was. I think it was something deep inside of him that climbed out and took hold of him, because I'm sure he's not that way now with Pema. I just _know_ it."

Korra gawked, totally at a loss for words. How was she supposed to respond to that?

"Anyways... Korra, I wanted to talk to you because... I just wanted to say... please, before you make a decision, think. I mean it, really think, do you understand me, miss?"

Korra shook her head, "Yes."

"Thatta girl."

Korra smiled... maybe things were starting to be clearer now. Maybe Naruto wasn't the culprit, and something more sinister was at work behind this terrible incident... she intended to find out... but there was one more thing she had to do before she went to see Naruto, wherever he was:

She had to talk to Mako.

* * *

"What do you mean? A messenger hawk? _Foreigners_ travelling in a large _metal_ ship? Different clothes than ours?" His breathing came in short and left him wheezing while his entire body shook.

"Naruto... I'm sorry, but when the rest of the six man cell backed out of the mission, we found his body. You can go see him, if you want. They are preparing for the funeral."

"Udon, what are you saying...? Moegi, tell me, what the hell are you guys talking about?"

Moegi, still in tears, barely looked up at the blond when he talked to her.

When Naruto, sitting at the visitor's chair in the Hokage's office after having traveled on Gamakichi's back to get back home swiftly, felt a hand come to rest on his shoulder. He looked up and saw the unmasked face of his teacher, and their Hokage.

Kakashi, smiling sadly at his student, handed him a small, frayed bundle that included a scarf and a konoha headband that were burnt by some sort of flash fire and then promptly stomped out..

"Naruto... Konohamaru... he's gone."

* * *

**Author's note**: Thank you again for reading! Can you see it all culminating to one point? How are you liking the story so far? I would really love to know! There are many things going on right now, and the most dangerous here is the big lie.

Also, I am once again shamelessly plugging our group, #Naruto-Loves-Korra. If you don't love them by now, then will you ever? :) By the way, I saw this incredible video today made recently (posted after my story, I think) of the pairing and it reflects what I wanted in this story. If you want a hint of what's going to happen next then you may want to look up DestinationAvatar "New Beginnings". If you can't find it, just go to my deviantArt profile at Lazybrowneyes or the group #Naruto-Loves-Korra and I have it posted there as both a journal entry and in my twitter feed. It is a must see, and if you weren't a believer before, you will be after seeing this. :) You have my word.

Thank you very much for your support both to my story and the group. I hope to see you on dA, tumblr, facebook or twitter :) Yes, we have all of those.

Also, if you are a NarutoLovesKorra fan and want to submit a crossover fanfiction to our group, we could use more of your stories!

Good night, and good luck with midterms :)


	6. Chapter 5: Believe it

Chapter 5: Believe it.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Naruto or TLOK. Naruto is owned by Kishimoto and TLOK is owned by Nickelodeon and its creators: DiMartino and Konietzko. Thank them for such wonderful universes in which we can engross ourselves in and become utterly, blissfully lost within them.

* * *

He could hear water dripping in the background and the soft hum of a working pipeline nearby. The air was dank and it was obvious that the entire place, wherever he was, was completely mold-infested. He remembered being sedated and then brought into a dark room-this must have been it. The flood lights near the ground were on further up the dark path, but their hazy light did not reach the room he was in. He looked around and, after his eyes adjusted a bit, he realized just how familiar the architecture of the underground passage was; the ceiling was vaulted and the walls striated, or rather, they were grooved and marked with ridges that made the square room seem circular. Once he made it past the doorway at the end of the room and began walking down the hall with the floodlights on either side of him on the ground, the hazy familiarity he felt became a sharp recollection of the many times he utilized these underground passageways to maneuver his forces about the city right under the hound nose of the former chief of police. These were the veins and arteries of Republic City, the city's roots which helped power it and provide clean water for nearly every resident of the bustling city above.

He heard a loud pang as the pipelines that ran along the wall came to life. A slow shaking sound quickly became a violent drumming as hot water was forced through the pipes nearby. The cool moisture in the air met the hot steel as the water increased in temperature and a hasty white fog arose from the surface of the pipes and clouded his vision as he walked further on through the underground corridor.

At the end of it was two passageways. One was a darkly lit tunnel, while the other was a staircase which ended in a dimly lit room and a ladder within it, likely to the surface.

"Which path would you take, I wonder?" mused a raspy voice made of sandpaper and gravel.

He turned back from whence he came and saw a pale-faced man standing there with long dark hair and eyes glowing yellow in the dark. He could see his red tongue sliding out and the reflective lighting in the room was just bright enough that the yellow of the fangs in his teeth was clearly visible. He wore clothes unlike any that he had ever seen in this era, and in his long, death white fingers he held something quite familiar to him.

"That is the mask of Amon," he said calmly, eyeing the strange creature before him as he made his way past him, looking up the staircase and then turning to glance down the dark tunnels below.

"I see you are still familiar with the paraphernalia of a useless revolution."

Glaring, he said, "It was not useless; do not speak of that which you have no understanding."

"Ah," said the white faced man, "but I do...

"You see, I am from the spirit world. And I have been watching you closely, waiting for the right moment to guide you in your aspirations, for I believe they will lead to peace and equality among all, benders and non-benders alike."

Quiet he stood, perturbed by the notion that the spirit world would deem it necessary to step in when humans could not solve their differences on their own.

"You are interested in what I have to offer, then, young Noatak?"

Noatak eyed the creature feverishly, but he nodded anyways.

"I am elated that you are a creature of reason... I should have known as much, since it was you who wanted to make something more than that reckless nature of the Avatar could ever possibly create.

"Reckless?"

"What is more reckless than to put the weight of the world on a single person? Even if that person reincarnates, how often has the avatar left the world struggling to find its balance? He, or in this case, she has allowed for too much strife. If only she would use her powers correctly, then we would be able to find that utopia told of in fairy tales and legends.

"Instead, we must circumvent her. She, the Avatar, is our obstacle and the root of all of the evils of this world, as well as those within the spirit world. Without bending, people would just be... people. And this world and mine would be better places for it."

Noatak frowned, "Even I understand that some bending is required... to fight bending, mostly. Chi blocking can only do so much... But there are also things like our electricity, which comes from firebenders, and even waterbenders who provide favorable currents for our watermills which run the machinery which produces what is necessary for civilized living here in the city and throughout the world... the airbenders are too small now to influence us yet, but I realized in my battle that non benders rely on benders far too much for a real revolution to take place..."

"And yet, what if I were to tell you that, together, we can develop the technology which will make all of them useless? All of them-earth, fire, air, water-we can make all benders obsolete and make this world a world where people never again have to be categorized; never again will a person have to be either a bender, or a non bender, and this discrimination can end... so that no boys have to grow up with similar circumstances to your own."

Noatak's breath caught in his chest when he saw that the pale faced man was standing directly in front of him now, having gotten a little worked up in his words as he leaned, closer and closer with his eyes ensnaring him from beneath his brow line. Noatak turned away, remembering his family and the wedge which bending drove between them.

"What kind of technology?"

"Turbines and motors, ran by the same fossil fuels as those in the Sato Mobile. Enhanced communications networks, and a better designed system for electricity distribution throughout the city. This is all ancient technology that has been either excavated and repurposed or refurbished. I can create all of this and more, including... this."

Holding out his hand, Orochimaru handed him a strange object and showed him how to fit it into his hand.

"What is this?"

"A hand cannon. It is held in one's grip and you aim and fire a volley which can pierce even through tough armor, depending on the quality of the ammunition used... a perfect weapon for a person who cannot use those chi-blocking techniques against benders and non-benders alike."

Holding it in his hand, Noatak carefully handled it back and forth, looking at its sleek design and the strange gizmo that was set right at his index finger.

"And this? What is this strange little crescent body here?"

"It's the trigger... if you pull it, it triggers the reaction which causes the cannon to fire. I will hold onto this, for now." He reached out and Noatak handed him back the contraption.

"Of course... What is your name, spirit?" he asked.

Smiling, he said, "Lord Orochimaru. I am the spirit of the feathered serpent."

"The feathered serpent... Lord Orochimaru, what would you have me do?"

"Take this," he said, taking a step back, Orochimaru stood below the stairs and nearby the tunnel before looking back up at him. "And choose your path."

"My path?" said Noatak, holding the mask of Amon in his hand and staring at it briefly before looking up towards the two paths before him.

"Yes. What happens next... is entirely up to you."

Noatak closed his eyes and gripped the mask firmly in his hand. He once hid in the shadows, away from the light, using its secret veil to conceal his hand as he struck his opposition in the darkness. He gnashed his teeth together, his eyes slowly opening as he looked away from the empty pit of the darkness to the light up above. His eyes, once again, had to readjust, but he knew now what he had to do.

Stepping up, he made his way to the center of the room and took hold of the ladder in front of him. Climbing it, he opened the cover above his head and pushed through the bright light coming from up ahead.

Standing out in the courtyard that led to the building of the United Republic Council, Noatak looked behind him and saw a white snake slithering up to him. He looked down as he saw it glide over his boot and towards the city council, and he knew then just what it was he was supposed to do once he set foot inside.

When Noatak made his decision, it was Amon who pushed open the front doors and quickly knocked out the three-of-the-four-remaining members of the council, as well as sending off the council page to relay a message to the Chief of Police.

"Republic City is now under Equalist control. Inform the Chief of Police that she and her men no longer have any jurisdiction here and if they would like to retain their bending for another short while, then they should flee tonight. There will be no tolerance to anyone caught bending in the great Empire of Anagenesi; the evolution of human beings as a species."

The page, with a face pale white and eyes wide with fear boiling behind them, looked as if he was speaking to a hungry polar bear dog. "You were supposed to be dead!"

Smirking behind his mask, Amon simply asked, "Am I still not? Go, before I choose someone else to do your job for you."

Screaming, the page ran out the front door to the council, not even bothering to glance back at the council members he was leaving behind.

Orochimaru's serpent form seemed to melt, leaving only mud on the pristine marble floor of the council, content now that he pointed the gun and placed it in another person's hand.

Standing alone in a room, a shattered mirror in the corner, Noatak felt the haggard skin of his charred and putrid face that looked the very definition of death; his skin looked cracked and chipped, as if he were made out of porcelain or glass that was mishandled. He shook his head, unsure if he had made the right choice earlier that day by coming out into the light rather than continuing to lurk in the darkness.

The coup was over. The Empire of Anagenesi which was once known as Republic City was informed by radio that they were under military occupation by the Equalists. He contacted a previous ally in the revolution who worked with most of the major developments in the radio and, after explaining that his supposed fall from grace and then immediate death was only a ploy to conquer the city, his ally immediately accepted his proposal and broadcasted over the public radio where equalists and equalist sympathizers were to meet. Equalists knew some of the more hidden locations, and so they congregated there while a few of the recruiters went to predesignated sites and rounded up equalist supporters and brought them to secure locations to hear a private radio broadcast that was not given to the public.

Within a few hours the largest gathering of Equalists and recruits made it for either the broadcast or the big reveal over the 'group' that captured the council and defeated the police. The police were routed quickly once it was known that Lin Beifong had left Saikhan alone with the police force to deal with the city while she travelled together with the Avatar on her journey to the New World.

Noatak walked over to sit in a nearby chair, looking at another mirror before the beginning of his speech that he was about to give. So disgusted with the creature that looked back at him in the mirror, he had to turn away shortly after looking in order to keep from breaking another mirror.

So engulfed by this loathing of what he had become, he did not notice the footsteps behind him until he heard a cough as Orochimaru appeared to be clearing his throat.

"Hiroshi Sato was released from prison. His estate will be reinstated to him shortly and he will provide his full support to the Empire." . . .

… Looking up when the gate opened before him, Hiroshi Sato smirked when he heard, "My name is Lord Orochimaru, the spirit of the feathered serpent. Choose your path... glide alongside me in a world without bending... or plummet here in a prison cell where you rot."

"Obviously, milord, I choose the path you would have me take."

"Then leave this cell and stand with me and the rest of the Equalists. I have brought back the will of your people." Orochimaru left the cell, Hiroshi only a few steps behind him but losing him quickly, as the strange man seemed to vanish in thin air.

"I see," said Noatak, looking up into the mirror to look into the eyes of the serpent spirit standing behind him. He steeled his eyes and hardened his resolve so as not to shiver when the supernatural touch of his fingertips chilled his shoulder, though it offered only the lightest caress.

"You look perturbed... should I be concerned?" Orochimaru whispered, leaning in close and smiling widely as he gazed into his eyes through the mirror, his own hanging in the glass like two glowing moons in the night sky, an ominous shadow streaking through their centers in sharp slits.

"No, Lord Orochimaru. I only feel... I should not remove my mask... why is it, that with all of your power, my lord, that you brought me back with this horrid shell of a face?"

Cooing in his ear, Orochimaru shook his head, saying, "Now, now, young Noatak. You must think bringing a man back from the death god's pantry a simple task?"

"O-of course not, my lord."

"Well," he said, "of course it is, for Lord Orochimaru that is." He smirked and stood up, crossing his arms, "However, there are some stipulations that come with reviving the flames of life within someone who has already passed. The first is that a body must be sacrificed in order to bring another back. The second is that the state in which a person's body can be brought back will never be the same as it once was, for some of that person's spirit has already been consumed by the death god."

"The death god? Is this... some sort of spirit?"

Smirking, Orochimaru nodded, "A king of spirits, to be exact. He consumes the souls of the dead and ferries those he deems worthy across the great river into the afterlife. He is a very unforgiving spirit."

"I see... what, do you believe, would he think of me?"

Orochimaru stroked his chin and nodded, pacing about the room. "About you... who are we talking about here? You as Noatak or as Amon?"

Tensing, he stood up and turned around, looking Orochimaru in the eye. "What do you mean? As Noatak or as Amon? I am one and the same."

Nodding, Orochimaru walked over to the mirror and gazed in it for a while. He was silent for the longest time, until suddenly he asked, eyelids drooped slightly and a frown on his face as he asked, "Are you?"

It took him awhile to realize what he meant, but when he did finally, it clicked like a light.

Speaking what Noatak was too afraid to say, Orochimaru said, "From what I have heard, this person known as Amon was a real leader. He feared nothing, and was able to successfully cast a net over this city once before, only to have it ripped from his grip when his weakness was finally exposed."

"My weakness..." Noatak said, looking down at his hands and the mask he held there.

"Your identity was your weakness, Amon. You should embrace your new identity, and forget the past." Orochimaru smiled, "I have another gift for you other than words of inspiration... here." He reached into his robe and pulled out a thin, wooden container with a small metal clasp on one end. Handing it to him, he said, "It has been preserved better than most specimens that I have used before, when dealing with humans... I thought ahead, because I knew it would make living in your new body easier for you."

The waterbender flipped open the clasp and opened the handsome container. When he saw what was inside, his heart skipped a beat and a new fire was born behind the color of his eyes. Looking up into the mirror shortly afterwards, he stood up and walked out the door, a smirking Orochimaru following close behind him to watch from backstage as the water bender fearlessly walked into the light.

"Today is the first day of the new Empire! I have travelled to the spirit world and back again, and I am now cured of my illness! The blight that once ruined our powerful aspirations back then is no more. I have spoken with the great spirits and they have told me that bending has brought an imbalance to the world that must be corrected. They brought me back in order to establish this empire, to remove the threat of the benders to the world. The first thing we must do, is use this time wisely while the Avatar is away in order to prepare for her return. We must not underestimate the power of her ancient ancestry again!

And after tomorrow, not even the formidable force of the fire nation's navy will be enough to quell our retribution! They are being dealt with as we speak."

… Iroh looked up and frowned, "They have captured you also, Miss Sato?"

Asami rolled her eyes, annoyed at being captured again she directed her frustration on him, "Figured that out all on your own, Hercules?"

Pursing his lips, the general said, "I feel like we've met once before in similar circumstances."

"You're just full of one-liners, aren't you?"

"... this is going to be a long day."

"No kidding! Would you just hush up already?"

"And soon we will overtake not only the fire nation states, but also the water tribes, Air Temple Island and the Earthbending Coalition!"

And when he rose his fist into the air, the gathering of Equalists and their supporters cheered even knowing that both a civil and world war was about to begin. All of them, however, followed because they believed. His 'face' told it all. Amon stood, holding his mask to his chest, his lips pursed solemnly while his eyes gazed up into the air. He truly had resurrected from the depths of the underworld.

* * *

Several days later, Bolin walked along the shore, bringing some 'samples' that were gathered from the soil, plant and animal life to be brought back to the ship to be studied by a few of the scientists, specialists and various doctors on board. Among these were also objects such as kunai knives, village headbands and a few bingo books from various villages that Orochimaru had collected over the years-these being modified to suit his needs, of course-and chakra scrolls and seals.

He carried his shoes in his pack, his feet feeling the moist sand of the wake beneath his soles and between his toes as he hauled it across the relatively safe route that had been pre-marked for him, and one that he had taken several times already while running various errands for Orochimaru and various other people.

On this particularly sunny day, however, he saw a young man seated at the beach, his arms resting on his knees and his face buried in his arms. He wore baggy, orange pants that were cuffed a little shorter than usual, but still too long to be considered shorts, no shirt and a red and black collared cloak resting on his shoulders with flames along the fray.

"Whoa there! How's it going, Mr. New Worlder!"

Looking up, the blond man, younger than even Bolin, arched a brow and stood up. Suddenly Bolin was cautious, but when the blond laughed he frowned, "Hey, what's so funny?"

"What is that thing on your head?" he asked, smiling.

"A fireferett! His name is Pabu!"

"Pabu huh? Hey, Pabu."

"Hey... those are some weird marks on your face there," Bolin said.

"Oh, yeah? I've had 'em since I was born. Ha ha... well, pretty much anyways."

"Really? And the blond hair! It's so bright!"

"It was great for getting attention back when I was a kid. Still is, I guess," he said, grinning.

"And... blue eyes... blond hair... whisker-like marks... oh shit."

Naruto narrowed his eyes. "My name is Naruto Uzumaki... what's yours?"

"Naru-Naruto Uzu-u-umaki...?"

Naruto flinched when suddenly Bolin hit the sand, landing face first in the water.

Staring incredulously, Naruto walked over and pulled him over by his shoulder, flipping him onto his back after removing the heavy pack from his shoulders. "What the hell is going on with this guy? He looks like one of those foreigners that Udon and Moegi were talking about."

"Udon noodles? I'm hungry, Mako, can you get me some!"

Arching a brow, Naruto gave Bolin a sharp slap to the face, "Hey, wake up! I wasn't talking about noodles."

Groaning, Bolin opened his eyes and looked into Naruto's. "You're... Naruto Uzumaki?"

Nodding, Naruto frowned, "You wanna give me your name before you pass out again?"

"Ah... Bolin." And with that, Bolin went unconscious once more.

Shaking his head, Naruto sighed and began picking up the young man and hoisting him up onto one shoulder. "This guy sure is stocky. You need to cut back on those noodles, man."

Looking at the pack, Naruto hooked it by one of its straps with his foot and kicked it up into the air where he caught it with his free hand, his other holding the dark-haired man's back to keep him from slipping off of his shoulder.

Several hours later, when Bolin awoke from his stupor, Naruto set a bowl down in front of him, ramen noodles and a golden broth with small green herbs inside.

"What's this?" asked Bolin, looking up at the blond in confusion.

"Some ramen with Ichiraku seasoning. It's really good, trust me."

Wary of trusting the man who was supposedly a mass murderer, Bolin figured he didn't have much of a choice; if he didn't do as the man said, what was to stop this person from killing him? He quickly noted that he was on a beach and not on solid ground, and knew that even if he dug deep he would have trouble bending the sand since it didn't act the same way as rock and soil did.

Taking the bowl in his hands, he said, "Thanks for the grub," and, watching Naruto drink from his own bowl, wondered if the soup was poisoned.

"You were travelling pretty heavy. What's all of that you've got in that pack of yours?"

Sipping the broth, figuring that if he wanted him dead he easily could have killed him in his sleep, Bolin suddenly felt loose-lipped. "Well, it's just some scrolls and stuff from Oto that we're taking back to study."

"From Oto? As in Otogakure? What are you doing all of the way up there? It's a dangerous place to be in."

"Actually, it's one of the safest places right now for someone like me."

Eyeing him briefly, Naruto's eyes eventually closed as he took another sip from his bowl. He sat on his haunches, his arms resting on his knees, his feet still remaining bare.

"What about you? Why are you all of the way out here? I thought you lived in Konoha?"

Naruto stared at Bolin again. This time, he needed answers. Kneeling over to him, Naruto pressed a kunai that he pulled out of his cloak quicker than Bolin could catch his breath. The knife was pressed firmly against the dark haired man's neck, but he took great care not to break his skin, but neither did he allow it to be known that he was holding back. Suddenly, Bolin realized just how deadly a shinobi could be, because, pro bender or not, he did not have the training required to fight off this kind of stealthy assault on his person.

"Tell me... how do you know that?"

Eyes like stone that betrayed the way the rest of his body jerked at the knife, Bolin stared back at Naruto, his facial expression impassive.

Naruto looked at the knife in his hand and back at Bolin. His eyes narrowed and he stared down at the ground, then pulled the knife away. "I'm usually not like this... I lost someone very close to me... it's been hard for me lately."

Frowning, and slightly confused by his actions, Bolin said, "You'd think someone like you wouldn't feel anything at losing a loved one..."

"Someone... like me, huh? Ha ha, you'd be surprised how many times I've heard that growing up." Naruto shook his head, "But everyone feels that pain. Everyone. I don't know a soul, not one I've ever met, or done battle with, or loved, that hasn't felt that pain of losing someone. I'm sure... you've lost someone as well."

Bolin and Naruto just sat there in silence for a few minutes. Naruto, feeling like he crossed some personal line and wondering if he had offended the guy and Bolin, dealing with an inner-turmoil about relinquishing ancient history about not having parents to a man, who was not much older than a boy and clearly younger than him, who may very well be the mass murderer who eliminated Orochimaru's entire village.

"I have... you're right. I don't know anyone who hasn't lost someone. Well, the only one I can think of who hasn't right now is Korra, as far as I know, but she..."

"Korra! The spirit, Korra?"

Blinking, Bolin shook his head, "Well, I wouldn't say she's a spirit, spirited maybe, but... she is the Avatar."

Standing, Naruto said, "Please, I need to see her. Take me to her."

"Sure! No problem buddy!"

Surprised, Naruto blinked and said, "Really?" a large smile on his face.

"Oh wait, I forgot something, I'm not supposed to lead mass murdering demons into our camp just in case, I don't know, it decides to gobble everyone up! So, uh, No. Heck no. Actually, thanks for the grub, but me an' Pabu gotta make like a banana and... you know what."

As Bolin began to stand, Naruto set a palm down on his shoulder and shook his head, "What the heck is a banana and … did you just call me a... mass murderer?"

"Don't you guys have bananas over here?" Arching a brow, "I take it you're pretty used to being called a demon by now then, huh?" Sensing the tension, Pabu hissed at Naruto and then immediately dropped down to the ground, scurrying off. Naruto barely even spared a glance, his eyes locked onto Bolin's in a glaring match.

"Yeah, pretty much." Naruto said, tight-lipped.

"Oh... are you a demon? Where's your tail and horns? Your goatee?"

Blinking, Naruto shrugged. "What?"

"Usually when I think of demons I think of big scary people, not a shrimpy little blond kid who looks like he came from the jungle... though I guess that fire on your shirt-thing makes sense now."

"Wait a minute, are you insulting me?"

"Is the sky green? Well, no, but I bet I could convince you it was."

From the sizeable look of the vein on his forehead, Naruto may be suffering from a brain aneurism.

"Listen, Naruto, you're not Korra's type anyways. She prefers the dark and brooding character, you know, that guy that looks like he's just this big old pit of hidden emotions that she could just get lost in. A guy she can 'change'. Ah, you know, those guys that look like something's going on in their heads when nothing is really in there. You look more like the headstrong type of guy who won't back down from a fight or know when to quit before he gets too far ahead of himself, am I right?"

"Yeah... so you know... that I like her?" Naruto asked, confused. How had he contacted the spirit? Was he at Mount Myoboku also?

"Sure, what's not to like? She's strong, beautiful, well, not as beautiful as me, but yeah, she's also the Avatar and she can be very kind and caring as well."

Nodding, Naruto said, "She's also really lively... and funny... and a little dense."

"Whoa now, don't go insulting my friend, got it, buster? I don't care if you are a crazy person, I won't restrain myself if you start talking smack about my friends!"

Smirking, Naruto said, "Thats something we can agree on. You're funny, Bolin... I think you and I could be good friends."

"Actually, no, yeah, I kind of see that too. I mean, heck, you're charming, and I'm like, pretty roguish if I don't say so myself. Except there's this one, eency-teency little itsy-bitsy thing that I'm forgetting... uh, what was it? What was... oh yeah! You're a murderous douchebag!"

"Alright, now I'm sure that you're deaf. I am not murderous."

"Naruto... do you know what a rasengan is?"

Blinking, Naruto formed one and said, "Yeah, this is a rasengan."

Biting his lip, Bolin nodded slowly. "Yeah... a spiraling sphere. That's what he called it."

"He? Who are you-

"And are you the only one alive who can do it?"

Dispersing the technique, and thinking about it, Naruto said, "Well, my teacher can, but he doesn't really use it to fight. It's sort of like... my signature technique." He grinned, rather proud of himself.

Nodding, Bolin sighed. "I thought so."

Suddenly, Bolin ran away from the shore and turned around as soon as he hit firmer soil. "You'll never see Korra! Because I'm going to stop you right here and now!"

Bewildered, Naruto walked towards him and narrowed his eyes, "Bolin, I'm not your enemy."

"Anyone who could purposefully put a young boy through that terrible experience is not just my enemy, but a real jerk and needs to be taught a lesson!"

"You're not all there, are you?" Naruto asked.

Stepping firmly onto the ground, Bolin shot six bursts of hardened earth in Naruto's direction.

No seals! Naruto braced himself, too shocked by the speed of the attack that he was unable to defend himself from the first volley. Much to his chagrin, he took each of those six shots and fell flat on his ass on the beach.

"Shit, what the hell was that...?" Naruto looked up at the sky, in a daze after being jabbed several times by the earthbender in front of him, three of the six attacks nailing him on the chin, shattering each time after connecting from the sheer force of their speed.

"That's earthbending, punk! Now get up!" Stomping on the ground, Bolin shot a pillar through the ground using a lowkick and bolstered Naruto up by striking the air upwards with one knee-causing the pillar to shoot out of the ground to lift the blond-, where he proceeded to jab him several more times with smaller volleys that were more numerous than the ones preceding them.

"Now for a haymaker!" Closing his eyes, Bolin growled as he summoned as much earth as he could from the ground and propelled it forward by throwing a haymaker punch with such force that he had to spin mid air to land back on his feet properly and keep his footing.

Naruto, backed up into the pillar that had lifted him up before, black eyed and bruised, and stared up at the giant rock that was descending upon him.

When the rock collided with him and the pillar, sand and dust shot up into the air. Bolin had a hard time seeing through the smoky cloud in front of him. When it disappeared, however, Naruto was no longer there, and the pillar stood tall with a kunai jabbed in its center and a note on it. Surprised, Bolin walked over to the note and read it, "You... should be wary of your surroundings... oh and look behind you."

"Holy sh-!" Bolin dodged to the side just as Naruto reached forward to grab him by the back of his head. Spinning around, he groaned when Naruto's knee found his abdomen and his legs gave out briefly as he fell backwards against the pillar. Once he was next to it, however, Bolin regained his strength and used the pillar by scrambling around behind it and shoving it outwards, gliding the pillar of rock and soil along the ground and sending the blond tumbling backwards.

When smoke erupted again, Bolin squealed when he saw that the kunai had transformed into another Naruto who simply jumped off of the gliding pillar and spun in the air, towards him.

Knowing he was weak out on the beach area, Bolin tried to earthbend anyways.

The sand rose from the ground and sprayed outwards, but Bolin was unable to bring it close enough together to strike solidly with it. To his dismay, Naruto rolled right through the shroud of sand and opened up to kick him with both of his feet, shooting him outwards into the water. After rolling about over the surface of the water, tumbling into the deeper waters further away from the shore, Bolin felt a hand grip around the collar of his shirt and yank him upwards. Gasping from pain in his chest which came from the blond's powerful kick, Bolin opened his eyes as he was pulled up and out of the water only long enough to look into a pair of green-blue eyes and to hear Naruto say, "I didn't kill anyone."

Dunking him again, Naruto lifted him back up and waited for a response.

Spitting out water and chuckling in between coughs Bolin said, eyebrows raising suggestively, "I so believe you."

About to open his mouth to speak, Naruto was knocked back with a surprise left hook from Bolin. In a heartbeat, the earthbender was upon him, punching him in the face until it was a bloody mess. With each pounding he grunted out whatever word or part of a word he could, "Every. Body. Always. Under. Estimates. Me." Gasping for breath, Bolin shook his bloody hand and opened and closed it a few times, whistling. "Damn, you have a hard skull."

Naruto smirked beneath all of the bruises and exploded into a cloud of smoke.

"Can't be any harder than yours!" Bolin turned around at the sound of Naruto's voice, only to have a knee plowed directly into his face.

Falling back into the water, Bolin turned onto his palms and pushed himself back up, only to be shoved once more onto his back.

His hair wet, his face battered-and worse, the blond's wasn't so much as a little red!-Bolin spat out a mixture of blood and seawater, then looked up as a shadow engulfed him, the whisker-faced man stood menacingly over him.

"I'm through with you. If you don't tell me where, then I'm going to knock you out and leave you here. I'm guessing she's either in Oto, or that way." Naruto nodded in the direction that Bolin was originally walking in. "I'll check Oto first though. It's only a few minutes from here. I thought if I got you to introduce me, then maybe things would smooth over... and I also hoped to find out what had happened to Konohamaru... who killed him... how he was killed."

Bolin looked down at the sandy floor; little by little it was starting to move-pushing the water apart as a tiny surface formed like a small island rising from the ground in between his legs. "I don't know anything about your friend, but I can't let you do that."

Naruto walked past him and Bolin's eyes widened as he struck.

"What the heck..." Naruto yanked on his arm, but could not pull away.

With a smirk, Bolin stood up and raised his arms, then brought them back down his sides and pushed them out again. Naruto turned to look at his hand and saw that it was trapped in a pillar of wet sand. Confused, he tried over and over to pull his hand away, only to find that more and more sand was consuming his arm.

"I didn't know it was possible to move the sand underneath the water since the two elements were being mixed." Bolin brought his hands up in front of him and then jerked one knee back and stood on one leg in the water, his left arm bending at the elbow over his head and the other pointing down toward the beach floor. Suddenly, Naruto was completely covered with the moist sand.

By turning his body as he stepped forward with his suspended leg, his arms locking at his sides, elbows bent, the sand rose more and more around his captive as he meant to smother him, and end the demon menace. Grinning at his success, Bolin spouted out, "Oh yeah, Bolin. You da man!"

* * *

"Korra." The sound reverberated in her and made her have to suppress a shudder. She turned to see Mako standing behind her and she smiled fondly at him, though the look quickly turned into one of guilt and worry. After a few moments of just standing there, trading glances, Mako sighed and said, "Sorry. I have to-wha-wait Korra!"

She had interrupted him without pause, her hands seeking and finding the fabric of his shirt and using their strong grip on it to pull him close as she kissed him and felt him return it amorously.

Korra, ecstatic that she still felt the same way about Mako that she had when their relationship first began, dove deeply into the kiss and lost herself in his strong embrace. His body was like tempered steel, the sign of a hardened life, and yet he could cradle her gently much like the durable scarf he wore that had endured all of those years.

Holding one another, the couple sighed when the kiss was over and Korra had to look down to the ground to hide the embarrassment on her face.

"Korra..." Mako reached for her and cupped her jaw with his right hand. "That was... amazing. You didn't use your tongue or teeth like that the last few times we kissed. What changed?"

Blushing still, Korra shrugged while she held onto his shirt, leaning into him as they stood there within the Otogakure campgrounds. She could smell his musky cologne; a heady blend of Earthbending Coalition native 'agar' wood, something that was imported regularly to Republic City, together with the sharp smell of deercat leather that was likely from the rainforests and a kick of black pepper, which was a fire nation states import. She peered up from the comfy embrace that she shared with him and mumbled into his chest, "I don't want you to go."

"What?" he asked, not quite hearing her muffled sounds.

Taking one last breath of his musky scent, Korra pulled her lips away from his chest and said, "I don't want you to go..."

Mako frowned, "Listen, Korra... I promised Bolin I'd see him off for the inter-tournament. Plus, I was only staying here a bit longer because I needed, well, one, to talk to you, and two, to touch base with Chief Beifong one more time so that I can deliver whatever messages she has to Saikhan. I have to get back to work to make sure that the city is safe."

Korra gripped his shirt tighter in her hands and muttered, "I don't care. Tell them you can't."

"Korra... I can't do that to him. He's my brother and I made a promise... and I have a job to do, just like you do here."

Korra's eyes widened, but she smiled and shook her head. "You're right... jerk."

"Hey now, I don't think I deserved that," he grumbled.

Smirking, Korra leaned in close and whispered, "Oh no?" Her lips pressed up against his just as she whispered, "Do you deserve this?"

They kiss was quickly interrupted when they heard the shrill whimpering of Pabu.

Breaking away, the couple turned to look at the fireferett and Korra asked, "What's wrong, Pabu?"

Mako, however, knew better. If Pabu came here on his own...

"Korra, we need to check on Bolin. Something might have happened to him."

Looking up after gathering the whining creature up and cradling it against her bosom, she said, "Should we get some backup?"

"There's no time. Let's go."

Nodding, Korra let the pet scurry up her shoulders as she tilted her head, "Alright, but if we're gonna get there quick then we need to do this my way."

Looking at her oddly when she waved at him and started running towards the cliff and the shoreline below, Mako's jaw dropped when suddenly a large wave of water rose up from the bottom of the steep cliff and crashed, pulling him in as he stumbled around, finally landing inside of a bubble as Korra, in her Avatar state, moved as fast as she possibly could along the shore line.

* * *

"Better I find out he was telling the truth afterwards... than to risk him killing my friends later, I think." Having mixed emotions about this, Bolin's concentration slacked and he didn't notice that the sand was expanding more than it should have.

In an explosion which originated in the lower right corner, Naruto emerged with his rasengan pointed at Bolin's chest, only to disperse it at the last second and press only his palm into the young man's gut, knocking the wind out of him.

Hard headed as he was, Bolin parted the floor beneath Naruto's feet even though he could hardly breathe. Tripping and falling over, Naruto found himself struck in the gut by a wet mass of sand as it engulfed him once more. He looked up to see Bolin running back to drier ground.

Closing his eyes, he felt the chakra of the sea as the waves crashed over him. Felt as the chakra in the sand below and the sky above mixed and molded together. With renewed strength and a pair of yellow and black eyes, Naruto shot out of the grinding sand and landed in front of Bolin.

"Whoa... that is so weird! Listen dude, I didn't know you had glowy-eyes!"

Smirking, Naruto said, "Yeah, you just never know these days, do you?"

"Nope."

Reaching outward, Naruto flicked Bolin on the forehead.

The earthbender tumbled backwards, rolling in the dirt as he crashed up against the stone pillar he erected earlier. He looked up, eyes wide in shock as Naruto smirked and pulled off his wet cloak, tossing it to the ground.

Bolin blinked, then pointed one hand against the palm of the other above his head, yelling, "Whoa, time! Time! No one told me you had super-strength! I need some freakin' stats on this guy, sheesh!"

Naruto laughed. "I really wish we didn't have to fight."

"Sorry, don't have a choice. As long as you're adamant about seeing Korra, I'm twice as adamant about keeping you from doing that."

"I can't blame you. You're just trying to protect her... even though I've told you that I mean no harm." Frowning, Naruto took a step forward and said, "But... for some reason... my rasengan..."

He held his arm out and created another in his palm. "This is the reason why you are so sure that I killed someone?"

"Not just someone... you murdered everyone in Otogakure."

Eyes filled with scepticism, Naruto shook his head and said, "No, no. Listen, I didn't even kill the guy who started the Fourth Great Shinobi War. Trust me, the whole reason why I just came back from training was because I don't want to have to hurt anyone ever again. I thought if I became powerful enough then maybe... people would stop... shit, I sound like a bad guy saying that, don't I?"

"Kind of... I guess I can see where you're getting at, but haven't you ever heard that power corrupts powerfully?"

Frowning, Naruto shook his head. "I thought it was that absolute powers corruption... oh, shoot."

"Oh, you're right... it's like... uh..."

Both of them stood there, gawking at one another until finally Naruto said, fuck it and Bolin laughed.

"Power absolutely sucks." They said in unison.

Laughing again, Naruto walked forward and was about to release the rasengan in his grip when suddenly a bolt of lightning struck him in the back. Yelling out in pain, Naruto shook and writhed until the electricity stabilized and he fell to his knees, landing on his hand and on top of the rasengan.

Bolin's eyes widened when the ground at his feet exploded and he was sent flying. He spun in mid air, his body spinning horizontally as he landed flat on his stomach. A loud ringing in his ears was the last thing he heard until he hit the ground, face first, unconscious.

Groaning, Naruto looked up from the pit the perfected rasengan made on the ground below.

The way the rasengan worked, it's rotating energy focused on a point, but when that energy ceased to be maintained in a rotating motion, it dispersed outwards violently, which is the reason why Bolin was sent flying.

The way it looked from way up high on the giant, spinning, water pillar that Korra and Mako were riding on, was that Naruto was advancing on Bolin with that spiraling sphere at the ready. Any thought that Naruto wasn't responsible for the mass killings in Otogakure flew right out the window; in Mako and Korra's eyes, this incident made it quite clear.

"Get away from him!" Korra screamed as she saw Naruto climb up onto his feet.

He recognized that voice. Concentration lost, his bluish green eyes sought hers and he stood there, at the cusp of the crater in the ground, absolutely stunned.

She was a dark skinned, dark haired girl with a kindling fire in her ice blue eyes. She wore an ocean blue, form-fitting shirt with twin seams along the front and the back and an asymmetrical fold on the front just below her high collar. Her face was framed with generous strands of hair on either side in front of her ears, twin pigtails, each held in place by blue and white clasps, another larger clasp used similarly to form her high ponytail. Her shoulders were bare, upper and lower arms covered in long, sleek, halfgloves that were secured using elastic bands just below her elbows and right above her forearms. Her pants were navy blue and baggy with a furred pelt tied by sash around her waist and a pair of large, white-trimmed shoes that looked like they were homemade.

Without even using his sage abilities, Naruto knew that this was the same girl who visited him in the cave. The girl he kissed. She also looked like she was about ready to kill him. He could literally feel the killing intent, something he had not expected from her or any of the other foreigners... perhaps it wasn't a technique? Just something one felt by way, he wasn't sure what, but something kept her cemented to the ground.

"Korra..." he said, taking a step forward.

Mako suddenly stood in front, "Don't you come any closer, you monster!"

Glaring, Naruto looked back at Bolin for a moment. Demon. Monster. Murderer. Enough was enough. Even people from a world who he'd never been to were calling him things like this?

Naruto closed his eyes for only a moment and through the advanced training he undertook for the better half of the year he was able to summon up enough chakra from the nature around him to stabilize his sage mode.

Korra immediately recognized the state he was in and she looked away.

_This demon... what did it do?_

_The demon murdered my people._

_I would very much like to talk to him myself and ask him a few questions. Some very important questions._

_With the spirited way in which you defended him before, it would seem to me that you somehow established some sort of relationship with him... are you certain you never visited our home and he has never visited yours? _

_They would lie to you! Lie so plainly and clearly, so sure of face, that you might, for the briefest of instants, find yourself believing their lies. Please, I warn you... do not allow their tongues to manipulate what you have seen with your very own eyes today!_

Korra clenched her fists and stepped forward.

"Wait, Korra, let me handle this." Mako offered, stepping in front of her. "I need to pay him back for what this bastard did to that kid."

She didn't say anything, but her fists relaxed; her gaze, however, never faltered.

Smirking, Mako stepped forward and jumped back and forth on his feet before settling into a stance, his head tilting slightly. "Let's do this, monster."  
"My name is Naruto," he said, eyes narrowing slightly. Without warning, Naruto charged. Mako took a step back and was about to kick up a flame in the blond's face when suddenly he found himself skidding along the dirt floor, rolling around in the soot and landing in the crater made by the rasengan previously. "Now move out of my way, pretty boy."

Korra was shocked into awareness. Her brain didn't quite comprehend what she just saw happen. She looked on to see Mako stumble out of the crater, only to fall back into it, groaning in pain.

Naruto's eyes softened when he gazed into Korra's. She looked back and forth between him and Mako, confused. Why had he spared Mako? He seemed ready to kill Bolin a second ago! Furious, confused and torn, Korra made her decision.

"Fine, if Mako is no match for you, then that means I have to fight you in the Avatar state."

"Avatar... state?" Naruto frowned, "Korra, I don't want to fight you. I don't want anything bad to happen, I'll even … try to let Konohamaru's death go and we can work together to build a bridge between our two worlds."

"Naruto, I don't know if you murdered all of those people or not, but the mark left behind on their corpses is a spiral mark like the one you pushed into the ground there. How their bodies were not destroyed, I don't know, but they were all definitely dead... my friends here had to bury those bodies-people they didn't even know-and this is why I have decided... if you don't leave now, then I will stop you for good-right here, right now."

Frowning, Naruto said, "So someone used the rasengan to kill those people? Korra, I'm sorry-"

"Stop. I don't want to hear it. I'm giving you a chance: run away now and I won't have to kill you."

For a while, his mouth was agape, but then Naruto looked down at the ground and shook his head. "Korra... do you believe in love at first sight?"

"No," she lied. She truly believed that was what she felt when she first met Mako.

Smirking, Naruto shrugged and said, "When I was young, I met a pink haired girl named Haruno Sakura. She was the only person who was nice to me, and when we got older she fell in love with a boy and forgot all about that small act of kindness she showed to me when we were... what, five? I had never let that memory fade... but now I can't remember anymore... but that isn't the only fading memory of her. I kissed her, disguised as that boy she was in love with, and I didn't really feel bad about it, but I can't really remember what the kiss felt like. You see, it's weird that I can't remember. My memories of her started to get hazy when I first met you in Myobokuzan; up until then, I remembered exactly what that kiss felt like. But when I kissed you... well, the only thing I can think of when I try to recall that innocent little kiss is the way our mouths just... melted into each other. The reason why I can't remember that girl anymore is... I think it's because I'm not in love with her anymore."

Looking up at her, he said, grinning, "I don't apologize alot, but sorry. A long time ago I told myself I would never run away from anything again." He held up his hand and showed her his palm. "This is the hand that I swore on-it was during my first real mission as a shinobi-I vowed that I would never run from anything if I was scared of it or its consequences. I vowed to face everything head on, and I made it my nindo that day-it was my ninja way."

She looked on sternly, in a brooding silence as she mauled over everything he was telling her. He didn't seem finished, so she kept silent and waited patiently, hoping that something he'd say would resolve everything, and yet knowing where this speech of his was, inevitably, going to go to.

"And Korra, like you said, I very well might die tonight. So, if that's the case, then I have to tell you now. I know it's not the right timing. And I know I'm an idiot for saying this out loud, but I would much rather be an idiot or a fool than a smart person who never got to say what he wanted to say before he died.

"Korra... I love you. And I'll be damned if, after all this time being a thick headed idiot, I up and change over a new leaf now and run away before telling you that.

"_I love you._ Believe it."

Mako, having crawled out from the crater, head still ringing, muttered, "Holy shit."

* * *

**Lazebe: **Alright, so I thought this would be the end of it, but I have to work on a paper tomorrow so you will just have to wait until next week or so. I had fun writing this chapter and I hope that you read, review, and join my group on dA or follow me on tumblr. Thanks a lot for your wonderful reviews so far and for all of the favorites and follows I have already. I appreciate the support!

BTW: Still looking for people who want to submit their fanart/fanfiction/amv's to us. Please send me a PM or contact me on dA.


End file.
